


Colder than the Moon

by astralelegies



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Established Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov, Illustrated, M/M, Military Academy, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-10
Updated: 2018-02-10
Packaged: 2019-03-16 00:15:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13624491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astralelegies/pseuds/astralelegies
Summary: When the ship touches down and Yuri steps off the gangway, barricaded behind a gaggle of locals returning from business or vacations of their own, Otabek’s heart stops for just a moment. Yuri’s hair, loose and mussed slightly by the wind, catches the sunlight in a way that doesn’t seem quite fair, and Otabek thinks, for no longer than the amount of time he allows the words to cross his mind, that Yuri is the most incredible person he has ever set eyes to.~On time and distance and the people caught in between.





	Colder than the Moon

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Big Bang!!! On Ice challenge. Immense thanks are due to these two [wonderful](http://evening-radio.tumblr.com) [humans ](https://galaktidong.tumblr.com) for creating amazing art and being generally fantastic to work with, as well as to the mods for organizing the event. If you want to check out other people’s work, you can do so [ here](https://bigbangonice.tumblr.com). Hope you enjoy!

_I. The Lunar Years_

The United Earth Official Duelist Academy rises like a latticework of silver above the craters ahead. From his taxi window, Yuri catches a glimpse of the narrow steel spires that until now he’s only ever seen in database pictures, staring at up at him from a library tablet alongside his application.

There are only two other passengers in the vehicle with him, although tomorrow is to be the first day of classes, but after all, most of the other cadets have already arrived. The first stranger is in the seat behind Yuri’s, and has thus far in the half hour elapsed since their route began attempted to strike up at least seven conversations, which Yuri’s annoyed grunts, what he assumed would be a universal “no” signal, have done nothing to stop.

Just now he is, mercifully, too preoccupied with some message on his communicator for his continued prattle, though even when he refrains from speaking he can’t manage to be nearly as quiet as their other traveling companion. This one looks to be around twenty years old, or a little past, and hasn’t torn his eyes away from the front window since he climbed into the cab. Yuri can’t tell if it’s because he’s lost in thought, or because he’s just really into the scenery.

As they pull up on the road in front of the Academy’s main entrance the side of the cab attaches to the airlock that will take them to the school proper. As they disembark, stranger number one—Jean-Jacques “you can just call me JJ” Leroy, as he has introduced himself (but giving him a name means that Yuri must also give in to the likelihood that they’ll have to take classes together)—starts to talk again. Yuri isn’t sure if it’s supposed to be directed at him, or if it’s a more general monologue, because he doesn’t once slow his speech or ask a single question, which seems to run counter to the conversational etiquette other people are always trying to convince Yuri he should follow. Stranger number two glances over at them, his expression a mask. Is he annoyed? Yuri contemplates giving him a rude hand gesture, but decides that he doesn’t want to alienate everyone he comes across on his first day. Not _intentionally_. Mila would be proud.

Mila herself is waiting for him just inside the main doors, arms out wide like she’s going to give him a hug, or possibly judo flip him. Catching his expression, she opts for neither, and instead ruffles his hair, as if to remind him of the indignity that she’s still taller than him.

 _One last growth spurt_ , Yuri thinks, _and you won’t be able to pull that one anymore_.

“You made in in one piece,” she says, and eyes the other two recruits. “And so have they. No fights on the way over, I take it.”

“I’m not an amateur,” Yuri scoffs. “I’ll fight if I’m getting paid for it. Or if they really deserve it.”

“That’s always an interesting prerequisite, with you,” Mila says, as if she’s any different. The last time Yuri got on her bad side he couldn’t bend his right arm for a week.

“You ready?” she asks, and he shrugs.

“Are you?”

She grins at him. “This place isn’t gonna know what hit it.”

Inside, the institution holds true to its military affiliation. The architecture and the furniture are entirely utilitarian, not an item or an inch of space wasted. Yuri supposes there aren’t that many inches to spare, on the moon.

“Our last arrivals. I’m glad to see you’re finally here.”

Yuri recognizes the woman striding down the hall towards them, too, from photographs. Admiral Lilia Baranovskaya, one of the most decorated former commanders of United Earth’s fleet and the latest in the line of Academy presidents. Her demeanor is as fierce as her reputation. Behind her, the renowned General Yakov Feltsman glowers at the gathered assembly, and even Yuri catches himself feeling a bit cowed. Mila gives a polite bow, next to him, kicking him to do the same. The Admiral looks them over.

“Cadets Plisetsky, Leroy, and Altin. And Babicheva, wasn’t it? Here to welcome the other new recruits?”

“Yuri is an old friend,” Mila says, slinging an arm around him that he promptly shrugs out of, and projecting a confidence she almost looks like she feels.

“Indeed.” Admiral Baranovskaya gestures to her vice president. “General, will you show them to their quarters?”

“Right away.” He gives them a skeptical once-over. “Follow me.”

Mila tags along, chattering amicably about whatever Yuri has missed since he last saw her. After a while JJ takes an interest, and the two converse pleasantly enough, leaving Yuri to stand awkwardly a half-step behind Cadet Altin, who still hasn’t spoken a word. General Feltsman walks a few paces ahead, deliberately out of discussion range.

It isn’t long before they reach their destination. The living quarters are contained in an offshoot of one of the compound’s main buildings, with a floor each for first, second, and third year recruits. Yuri’s class is at the ground level. He catches a glimpse of the dusty lunar surface through a viewport in one of the halls as they pass by, and the stars beyond. Even more so than when his shuttlecraft touched down, this is when it really hits him that he’s no longer on the planet he’s lived all his life. He has the sudden urge to find the nearest window he can that will give him a view of Earth, so small and far away below him.

Mila is next to him now.

“What do you think?” she asks, in a low voice. “It all feels so real now, doesn’t it?”

He nods wordlessly.

The cadets have been grouped into six blocks, and housed accordingly. Each group has its own bathroom and sleeping chamber, and in addition, there is a small common room at the far end of the wing, which boasts a kitchenette and a bank of windows displaying exactly the view Yuri wanted to see. He stares out at his home planet until he realizes with a start that the others have moved on. 

Cadet Altin and JJ have both been placed in his block, while Mila is in the room next door. There’s a handful of others in their group, none of them faces Yuri recognizes, except for one.

“Hello, Yuri,” says Victor Nikiforov, with a breezy wave and a nonchalant smile. He gestures to the man next to him. “Have you met my husband?”

Yuri’s fists clench. “Mila didn’t tell me you’d be here.”

“I expect that’s because she wanted to be sure you’d show up.”

He remains annoyingly cheerful in the face of Yuri’s withering scowl. Next to him, his husband glances between the two of them with concern.

“How do you and Victor know each other?” he asks.

“He betrayed me,” Yuri says, a statement which makes Victor laugh.

“I see you still have a flare for the dramatic.” He turns to his husband. “Perhaps you’ll recognize him, darling—Yuri Plisetsky, one of the most elegant duelists ever to grace Moscow’s fighting rings.”

The man’s eyes widen, but Yuri only snorts.

“Your flattery means nothing to me,” he tells Victor, and stalks over to his bunk, throwing his bag down with a loud thud. The noise earns him what might be a curious look from the cadet next to him, who turns out to be Altin. Yuri shoots him a glare too.

“What are you looking at?”

He only turns away again mildly, and continues to unpack his belongings.

They are not given any time to adjust to their new routine on the first day. Instead, they are thrown headfirst into what will become their daily schedule—waking at 0600 hours to go jogging before a light breakfast, followed by combat classes all morning and theory in the afternoon, lectures on law and diplomacy and strategy. A duelist is not only to be an elite physical operative, but one with a keen analytical mind, trained to use their wits as well as their fists. There is a reason why the Academy has produced more high-ranking officials than any other institution associated with the United Earth Spacefleet, why its graduates are the most sought-after for the most difficult missions, why it accepts only one percent of applicants. Three years here and Yuri will have written his ticket to his own chapter in this planet’s history books, if he can make it far enough.

He will.

After dinner there’s an hour’s break for chores, and then another hour of mandatory individual practice. Once that’s finished, provided there is nothing else they need to attend to, the cadets are free to do as they please until lights out at 2200. Yuri finds Mila lounging by herself in the common area, paying a suspiciously studious amount of attention to a book for their first day of lessons, and drops to a seat next to her.

“Why didn’t you tell me Victor had enrolled?”

She closes the book and gives a little sigh.

“In spite of what you might think,” she says, “I didn’t know he would be here until I saw him in person. Even my family connections don’t stretch far enough to know the private business of a Nikiforov.”

“And after you arrived?”

“I thought I’d let you figure it out for yourself.” She gives him one of her more serious looks. “Listen, Yuri. I know you’re still angry after what happened and that’s fine, but you have to put it behind you for now. You can’t give Admiral Baranovskaya a reason to come after you.”

“You think she’d get me in trouble for picking fights.”

“Cadets have been thrown out of the Academy for less.”

“I told you, I’m not—

“An amateur, I know. I’ve pulled you off enough people, Yura.”

“And I helped you slash your last boyfriend’s tires after he broke up with you. I don’t see your point.”

Mila blushes a little at that, glancing around quickly. “Don’t say that too loud.”

“What, afraid I’ll scare someone off?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“So you _are_.” Yuri snatches the book out of her hands. “You were hiding behind this earlier, weren’t you?”

Mila grabs it back from him to prove his point by burying her face in it.

“If you really must know,” she says, “there’s a girl in the room across from yours who was out here earlier—you know Sara Crispino?”

Yuri thinks she’s the Italian one with the long hair and the scowling brother, but he can’t be sure, so he shrugs.

“I might happen to think she’s kind of cute,” Mila says. She’s still not looking at him. “But like I said, none of your business.”

“Did you just voluntarily give me blackmail material?”

She laughs at that, turning towards him for just long enough to raise her eyebrows. “You’re very funny, Yuri. Do you really think that _you_ could ever blackmail _me_?”

Cadet Altin—Otabek, Yuri thinks he said his name was—happens to walk by at that moment, and the corner of his mouth gives a twitch, so quick Yuri almost misses it, but he thinks it could be almost a smile. Something about that makes his blood give a funny surge in his veins, and he wants to shout after him, but by the time he thinks of something to say, he’s already disappeared into their room. So Yuri slumps back on the couch and settles for teasing Mila some more.

* * *

 Most of the people who have ever encountered him would probably describe Otabek Altin as the brooding sort. He can’t really dispute the assertion, even if it makes him feel like a cliché—after all, here he is, awake too early and staring out the window next to his bed, preoccupied by his thoughts. On the moon.

It’s been almost a month, but there are some things here that still take getting used to. He has not shared living quarters with so many other people since he was much younger, and he’s too old now for it to make him think of home, and the room above his uncle’s bar that he split with his sisters, or so he claims to himself. Later, when he was on tour, he’d always had his own room, even if it never amounted to much more than a broom closet.

His bunkmates are a mixed bunch. There’s JJ Leroy, loud and braggadocios but ultimately harmless, and far from incompetent. Across from him are Yuuri Katsuki and Victor Nikiforov, always inseparable and, according to Yuri Plisetsky, insufferable.

Yuri has taken the bunk above his. Otabek tried not to give that any significance, their first night here, and hasn’t even really talked to him since. Everyone here must know his name, the prodigy, the fighting rings’ prodigal. Otabek must’ve seen his face staring at him from at least a hundred screens, back on Earth. He’s just as short in person.

It isn’t long before the other cadets make clear their roles at the Academy too, even if Otabek doesn’t often speak with them. Phichit Chulanont becomes the cheerful instigator, joined by his partners in not-quite crime Guang-hong Ji and Leo de la Iglesia, the American boy with the ready smile who seems somehow to have taken a liking to Otabek. Kenjiro Minami is not the youngest but is looked upon as the baby of the group, and likewise though Christophe Giacometti is not the oldest, he seems to possess the most of a certain kind of maturity (while utterly lacking some of its other forms). Seung-gil Lee fits comfortably into the stoic category, and Otabek is content to let him hold that title, while he himself fades into the background.

Today, they’re all running through hand-to-hand combat drills. For the first time, Otabek has been partnered with Yuri, who is, of course, an expert, which makes for an interesting challenge, though he seems to be using more of his energy to glare at the pair next to them than to fight. Nikiforov and Katsuki remain oblivious (but then, Otabek thinks, they often seem to be too engrossed in each other to bother with any kind of outside distraction). It doesn’t stop him from feeling offended, in an amused sort of way, that he is not a worthy enough adversary for Yuri’s attention.

“Look at him,” Yuri mutters, more to himself than to Otabek. “Who does he think he is, acting like he’s so good?”

“Who, Katsuki or Nikiforov?”

Yuri casts him a surprised look, as if he hadn’t realized he spoke the words aloud.

“Victor Nikiforov,” he says—or spits, really, through clenched teeth. Otabek raises his eyebrows.

“An old friend of yours, I take it.”

“Hardly.”

Otabek follows his gaze to look over at the pair of them. In the first week of lessons, Victor established himself as one of the clear frontrunners for this sort of close-quartered skill, to the varied envy and admiration of the rest of their classmates. His technique is fluid, precise—elegant, Otabek could call it. He fights as though he’s dancing, which is not entirely unlike Yuri. But Otabek suspects he wouldn’t be thrilled by the comparison.

“Enjoying the show?” Victor asks, and Otabek realizes he’s stepped out of the match to walk up to them, Katsuki only a few paces behind. Yuri glares at them.

“I apologize,” Otabek says, before his partner can get them both into trouble, but of course Yuri disregards the warning sign.

“Don’t you have a business to run?” he snarls. Victor is unruffled.

“My younger sister always had a better head for that sort of thing.”

“Does she keep her promises better, too?”

He gives an awkward shift at that.

“I’m sorry,” he says, to Otabek. “This is an old feud, and I’m sure Yuri doesn’t mean to drag you into it.”

“It’s funny how you can apologize on my behalf without ever actually apologizing to _me_.”

“Haven’t I?”

Yuri lets out a strangled yell and whirls around to turn his back on them all. It’s completely childish, and now Otabek is more curious than he should be. Victor must sense this, or perhaps he just relishes any opportunity to play the storyteller, because he leans in closer, as if to conspire with him.

“My father was the Baron Nikiforov,” he says. “Perhaps you’ve heard of him. He made a fortune in the rings, and retired with an untarnished record of wins. After that, he built an empire coaching people from all over the world. When he died six years ago, that duty was passed to me.”

“Did you ever fight yourself?”

Victor shakes his head. “The rings are such a grubby place. But I had been studying combat since I could walk, so I took up the mantle of training future champions, as my father would have wanted.”

Yuri, who has been glowering in silence since the start of the story, snorts derisively.

“And how long did that last you? You want to know what happened?” He turns to Otabek. “Four years ago he went on a tour of Moscow, scouting for potential students. I spent months fighting as hard as I ever had just to get him to make an offer to me. But when the time came for me to begin my training, he disappeared. I lost the Grand International Tournament that year because of him.”

“I had an urgent business call to Japan,” Victor says. “I would have returned right away, had I not met my Yuuri. After that, the family business was no longer a priority. I’m ashamed of it, but I could never have left. Someday you might know what I mean.”

“What I know,” says Yuri, “is that you’re a liar who breaks promises as easily as he makes them.”

Victor shrugs, a little helplessly, Otabek thinks. “If that’s truly how you see me, I suppose I can’t blame you. I hoped you’d have matured now that you’re an adult, but you’re still angry about the same things.” He walks away.

“Bastard,” Yuri mutters, and then, to Otabek: “Come on. Let’s fight.”

Still curious but not quite wanting to admit it to himself, Otabek acquiesces. They start up again, falling back on their own individual combat styles even though they’re supposed to be practicing the specific movements they’ve learned. Yuri is fully focused now, angry and aggressive and unrelenting.

“He’s just— _ugh._ He’s so _rude_.”

Yuri punctuates this with a particularly vicious kick that narrowly misses Otabek’s ribs. Otabek takes a swipe at him in response, but he ducks out of the way like it’s nothing.

“And you’re not?” Otabek says, which is, in all fairness, probably also rude. It earns him a fierce scowl.

“Didn’t you hear what I said? He abandoned me.”

“You did win.”

“Eventually.” This time Yuri’s uppercut grazes the edge of his jaw. “It’s not _good_ enough.”

“So you’ve hated him ever since.”

“This is my career, so you can’t accuse me of being petty. I’ve held grudges for longer.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

Otabek twists his arm behind his back and Yuri hisses at the pain, jabbing his heel into Otabek’s groin. He doubles over.

“Cheap move,” he wheezes. Yuri just shrugs.

“I’ve never won a match by fighting clean.”

Otabek knees him in the small of the back, knocking him to the mats below, holding him down. “Is that so?”

Yuri snarls, but says nothing, and at General Feltsman’s whistle Otabek straightens up, releasing him. Yuri springs to his feet, not bothering to dust himself off.

“You are now dismissed for lunch,” the General says, and the cadets stream towards the door. Yuri doesn’t move.

“You’re wrong about me, you know.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t hate Victor Nikiforov. I only wish I did.”

And then he walks away.

* * *

Yuri dreams he’s back in the underbelly of Moscow’s fighting rings.

He’s fifteen, and the battle that will come to define him in the eyes of the world has not yet taken place. It’s the Grand International Tournament, the biggest competition of its kind on the planet, and this is the first year he’s managed to qualify for the final round. Last year he came so close, only one win away from making it, but in the end he was too slow, and the brute strength of his opponent overwhelmed him.

This year, he has swept through his adversaries like a winter wind, the newly-minted spectator favorite, an unforeseen force of nature. Everyone marvels at his age, his dexterity, the ferocity contained and condensed within him. And Yuri is a performer as much as a fighter, but there is no lie in the fury he puts on display. In the rings, rage is the currency with which success can be bought, and Yuri has been endowed with what some people call an inordinate amount.

In the dream, Yuri feels every breath, every sensation exactly as he did three years ago. The pit of his stomach is hollow, vacant of nerves, and his blood rushes and boils the way it does before every fight, but his heart is empty, so empty. If he does not win this year, he will fight harder next year, and the next year, and the next, until he comes out on top and proves to the world that Yuri Plisetsky is not someone to be overlooked. There is nothing else in his mind.

His opponent in this, the last battle, is a woman who has already won the tournament for two years running. She reminds him a little of Mila, or how Mila might be if she ever dirtied her hands with professional fighting (instead of all the other things that keep her hands from being clean). The woman is brash and carefree, bigger than Yuri, though not enough for it to be a problem. Her tactics rely on physical might, though she is not so slow and lumbering as others who share the same strategy. There is a reason she is the returning champion, but Yuri will beat her all the same, because he has to.

He does—and he does it quick, because to allow the match to be prolonged would be to weaken his chances. He doesn’t realize he’s broken the time record until he hears the announcer roar it to the crowd with shock and an excitement that seems, at least this time, wholly genuine. Thirty-eight seconds and Yuri has made history. The camera drones circle close.

He acknowledges his audience, bowing low, and he can feel the weight of their applause as he raises his head. With victory ringing in his ears, Yuri thinks: _I can do more than this._

* * *

Of all the buildings in the Academy complex, Otabek’s favorite is the track. The containment dome stretches high overhead, transparent, giving the illusion that he’s out on the surface of the moon itself, and not trapped inside an oxygen field. The track skirts around the edge of the dome, just slightly bigger than the standard four-hundred meter perimeter. When Otabek runs he feels he’s dancing on the threads of a web of stars, wrapped in sky but not bound by it.

This morning, as with many others, he has risen an hour earlier than his bunkmates in order to enjoy the quiet of the track to himself. In the calm, he can run for a while in glorious silence, or lie back in the center of the ring and gaze up at the infinity of space that surrounds him. It’s nothing like a morning run in Almaty, where there is a sunrise and fresh air and a city that has not yet woken up, but the feeling is the same.

Unlike those other mornings, today he is twenty minutes into his routine when he receives a visitor. As he’s finishing up a lap Otabek can see a figure standing just inside the doors, and pulls up short in front of him. Yuri Plisetsky.

“I wondered if I’d find you here.”

Otabek shrugs. He doesn’t make it a secret, that he slips away every now and then, but people seldom seem to notice. He shouldn’t be surprised that Yuri has.

“And you?” he asks, not daring to say, _What are you doing here?_ because it would be rude. Yuri takes his meaning anyway.

“I had a dream about the past and came out here to remind myself of the future.”

“All those victories in the fighting rings,” says Otabek, and Yuri raises his eyebrows.

“I wasn’t aware you were a fan,” he says.

“I’m not,” Otabek says, and even if it may not be entirely true, he can’t call it a lie. “Someone always has a match on, though, no matter where you go.”

Yuri nods, more familiar than anyone with the ubiquity. They stand there a few moments, considering each other, until Otabek decides that he can’t think of anything else to say, so he starts jogging again. After a minute or so, Yuri falls into place next to him, keeping pace. Otabek allows him to remain there without comment, but after several laps Yuri decides to speak.

“They weren’t all victories, in the rings. After I was fifteen, though—then they were.”

“Why did you leave?”

Yuri shrugs, slowing his pace to scuff at the track with the tip of his boot. “What can I say that doesn’t sound like some stupid platitude? I wanted more, yeah, I was out of inspiration, sure. I was dead in there.”

He breaks off, unable to find the words to describe whatever the feeling is, but Otabek can remember the hollowness of performance just as well as the joy, stretched thin like a marionette with pulled strings, so he nods to show he understands.

“And now that you’re here, what will you do?”

“Graduate at the top of the class, get a good posting, work my way up to Admiral Plisetsky and retire to the planet they’ve named after me.”

The corner of Otabek’s lip twitches.

“What?”

“Could you really do that?”

Yuri frowns at him. “What, become an admiral?”

“Retire.”

“Oh.” He comes to a real stop this time. “I won’t know until I get there, right?”

“And if I get there first?”

“You? No way. I bet you I make it to admiral years before you do.”

“I’ll take that bet.” Otabek speeds ahead, forcing Yuri to chase after him. He swerves off the track to make a break for the door, but just as he’s drawing near Yuri trips him and he goes sprawling to the dust. He’s grinning as Otabek pushes himself back to his feet, so Otabek shoots him an injured frown.

“Are you really so desperate to win?”

He’s at least mostly joking, but Yuri’s reply is utterly serious.

“I’d sell my soul for it.”

* * *

A year passes. They’re given a month’s break before the next session of classes begins again, which Yuri spends at Mila’s apartment in Moscow, watching TV or listening to the radio all day while she takes care of her business.

In the evenings they’ll go out with Mila’s friends or just each other, and mock all the people who mistake them for a couple. Once, as she’s helping Yuri with the dishes on New Year’s Eve, she gets a call from Sara, and she’s so startled she drops her communicator in the sink. Yuri laughs while she seethes.

When the cadets return, Admiral Baranovskaya has warmed up to them a little—and only a little, but they have all dared to come back, and this has earned them a smidgeon of her approval.

“If you thought the last year was difficult,” she says, “know now that it was nothing compared to the trials that are ahead of you in this one.”

She isn’t wrong. They rise earlier, train harder, advance at a faster and faster pace. The cadets complain, and Yuri among them, but in his heart he’s racing along with their lessons, determined to stay ahead, grateful to be moving forward.

Most of his classmates have learned by now to give him his space. JJ is still frustratingly oblivious, and Phichit Chulanont is indiscriminate when it comes to dragging people into his latest schemes, but mostly people stay wary, and Yuri is content for things to remain that way.

Victor does come to bother him every now and then, offering to assist Yuri if he notices him struggling with some new technique or growling down at one of the viewscreens that contains their legal textbooks, to which Yuri always replies _fuck you, I don’t need your help._ Victor puts on a face like it’s a casual offer he’s making, but he’s so remorseful, so _guilty_ that it fills Yuri’s stomach with bile. It reminds him too much of being pitied.

One night he’s assigned to the same dinner cleanup shift as Katsuki—Yuri refuses to call him by his first name, and thereby feed the indignity that is Victor throwing him under the bus for some other Yuuri. The two of them have only spoken a handful of times, which at this point has become fully intentional on Yuri’s end, even though Katsuki always tries so damn hard to be polite. It’s pathetic.

Tonight, he seems oddly resigned to the fact that Yuri will not make conversation with him, and carries on with his duties in silence. This, too, feels like its own sort of insult, and it’s enough to get him to grudgingly snap out the first words, just as they’re washing up the last of the dishes.

“What could you possibly see in him, anyway?”

Katsuki blinks, startled but not confused by the question.

“You must know you’re not the only one who has dreams,” he says, after a moment. “Victor was the one to show me that I have the strength to achieve mine.”

He takes the last tray from Yuri’s hands and finishes drying it without further comment, setting it back in its cupboard with the rest of the stack. Yuri wonders if he’s angry, but he doesn’t look it. He catches Yuri frowning at him and gives a small smile, the motive of which is inscrutable, throwing Yuri off his guard.

“He has that way with people.”

Katsuki doesn’t even seem surprised at Yuri’s words. The smile grows, just a little, before he puts it away again.

“I imagine that’s why the old wound is still raw.” He’s looking at the towel in his hands, now, methodically smoothing the frayed corner over and over again. “I can’t blame you for being angry.”

“What would you know about it?”

“Only what Victor’s told me. And what you said that day last year.”

“But there’s more to it.” Yuri sighs, suddenly tired beyond measure. “Back then, my grandfather was in the hospital, so I didn’t really have a place to live, and Victor…he let me stay at his family’s penthouse in Moscow. I was there for two months, even before he agreed to take me on as a trainee. I never even thanked him for it. By the time he left for Japan my grandfather was better, but…” He breaks off, shaking his head. “There’s no reason why I should be telling you any of this.”

The sympathy on Katsuki’s face, subtle but profound, should make Yuri’s skin crawl. It halfway does, and yet—

“Has he ever apologized to you?”

“I don’t think he knows how.”

“Maybe not.” Katsuki lets out a long breath. “He’s tried, though, even if it might not seem that way. But if he won’t say the words, then I can say them for him: I’m sorry. It’s my fault Victor never came back to Moscow to train you.”

“I’m not a child anymore,” Yuri says, quietly. “I know it’s your fault.” Katsuki’s face falls, so Yuri rolls his eyes. “But I can’t blame you completely for Victor’s mistakes.”

They’re quiet for a while. Yuri sweeps up, while Katsuki finishes wiping all the counters.

“You know,” he starts, tentatively, “if you’re worried that Victor left because—because you didn’t say thank you, or whatever—

“I’m not.”

“Okay.” He pauses. “But if you were, Yuri, it’s not…Victor didn’t go to Japan because of anything you did, or—or didn’t do. He’s flighty and forgetful, but he’s not—if he thought that was the impression you got from him—

“I told you, it isn’t.”

“Okay,” Katsuki says again. Another pause. “You know, I bet I could get you that apology.”

For a moment, Yuri wants to ask him why, but he looks so earnest about it that something inside him shifts, and he says instead, “If you want. I don’t really care anymore.”

And Katsuki looks like he doesn’t believe him, but he doesn’t say anything else, either.

* * *

By their third year, Otabek and Yuri have become irregular sparring partners.

In-class matches work on a system of rotations, so that the cadets can grow accustomed to combat against multiple fighting styles. Only a few times does Otabek wonder what it is they’re being trained for, that they must learn techniques like these. There’s the government line, courtesy of the United Earth Spacefleet: graduates of the Academy or the other, lesser schools are a peacekeeping force, emissaries from the core of galactic politics and control, to ensure that the outlying colonies, first formed more than a century ago and now flourishing or floundering on their own, do not descend into total chaos. It’s an impersonal mission statement for a series of impersonal conflicts, at least from a distance. The Academy doesn’t believe in impersonal.

Outside of class, when there’s time (which isn’t often), Yuri will find Otabek and, wordless, drag him to the gym or the track. They’ll fight for as long as they have. Sometimes they talk, but never more than a few sentences. Otabek doesn’t know why he, out of everyone, has been chosen for this dubious honor, and has never asked. He wonders if this is enough to make them friends, now, or if there’s more to it than that.

“You’re distracted tonight.”

It isn’t a question. Otabek hits the mats with a dull thud and rolls over, swinging a leg out in an effort to trip his opponent, but Yuri is right, his heart isn’t in it.

“After next month,” he says, giving up his attack entirely, while Yuri frowns at him, “have you given any thought to what might happen?”

Yuri gives him a hard look. “It won’t be any different than what always happens. I’ll graduate and get assigned somewhere, and start working my way up. Punch agitators in the face and help people rebuild their lives, and all that bullshit.” He frowns suddenly. “Why do you ask?”

“No reason.” Otabek stands, readying himself in another fighting stance. “Let’s go again.”

Yuri shrugs, before finding a starting position of his own. Otabek makes the first move, before Yuri has the chance, jabbing at his stomach. He makes contact and Yuri stumbles back, but he recovers himself quickly, dancing forward to retaliate with a kick to Otabek’s sternum that he only barely evades. In doing so, he loses his balance—an amateur mistake, but he’s off his game—and goes sprawling back on the mats. Yuri crouches over to pin him down, a knee on either side of his waist, his arms pressed to Otabek’s chest.

“You’re still distracted,” he says, accusatory.

They’re interrupted before Otabek can answer. Yuri vaults off of him, landing (however improbably) on his feet, and glares at the intruders.

“This room’s occupied.”

“Clearly,” Victor says lightly, which only makes Yuri’s scowl deepen, but he holds up his hands in a peace offering. “We’re not here for practice. I have something I need to say to you, Yuri.”

“And if I don’t want to hear it?”

“That’s your choice.”

Yuri glances towards Katsuki, standing innocuously enough in the doorway, and then back to Victor.

“Fine,” he says. “Out with it.”

Victor takes a step closer.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

Otabek gives a cautious glance at Yuri to see how he’ll react, but his demeanor is calm.

“Did your husband put you up to this?” he asks.

“He gave me the courage to do what I should have done years ago,” Victor says, “but the apology is my own. I know this won’t make what happened okay, but I hope—I hope that you can let me try and begin to do that. To make things right.”

Otabek feels immensely like he shouldn’t be here—this moment isn’t meant for him—but if he tries to edge out the door now, he’ll only make himself more conspicuous. He settles for remaining as still as possible on the mat, head bowed so as not to intrude more than he already is. This means he can’t see Yuri’s reaction, though he can still hear his voice, a more even tone than Otabek would’ve thought.

“You’re right,” he says, “you can’t make up for everything with an apology that’s seven years late.” A pause. “But if you can prove to me—with _actions_ , not just words, from now on—maybe I’ll consider it.” The next words seem ever harder for him. “Sorry I was rude to you before you actually deserved it.”

There’s a longer moment of quiet, this time, followed by Victor’s (definitely choked up) “Yuri, you’ve grown up.”

To which Yuri replies, of course, “Don’t test your luck, old man.”

There’re footsteps, and then Katsuki’s voice.

“It’s alright if you need to take some time to think about everything. Victor and I will go now.”

Yuri doesn’t say anything, so Otabek assumes he nods, and then there’s the sound of Victor and Katsuki leaving the room. As soon as they’re gone, Yuri drops to his knees, and Otabek chances a glance over at him. His eyes are closed, fists clenched, but he doesn’t look angry.

“Are you okay?” Otabek asks, sure that Yuri is going to snarl at him for it. Instead, Yuri stretches a hand out to rest on his shoulder, as if to steady himself.

“I can leave too,” Otabek says, “if you want.” But Yuri shakes his head.

“You heard Victor,” he says, quietly. “What do you think?”

Otabek chooses his words carefully. “I think he truly is sorry. Which—like he said—doesn’t change what he did, but he seems to have a vested interest in making reparations.”

“Even after so long? Isn’t it too late now?”

“I suppose that’s up to you.”

Yuri collapses back on the mats, heaving a sigh, and turns his head to look at Otabek. “If we lie here and pretend that the whole issue doesn’t exist, maybe it’ll just go away.”

“I don’t think that’s how it works,” Otabek says, but his head is going _we, he said ‘we.’_ So he lies next to Yuri, and they stare up at the domed ceiling together.

* * *

On the last night before their cadet class graduates, Phichit gets it into his head to throw them a secret party. He’s assisted by his constant partners in crime, Leo de la Iglesia and Guang-hong Ji, and fully enabled by Victor, while Katsuki has to be dragged into his role as a reluctant co-conspirator. Yuri is content to wash his hands of the matter, but Mila won’t let him, as she puts it, “sulk in his hole of a room,” so he resigns himself to attending.

The event is to take over the whole of their floor in the dormitory. As third years, they have been given the penthouse, which is not particularly nicer than the rest of the wing, except that there are more windows, running along the ceiling and stretching over the wall at the end of the hallway. In honor of the occasion, Phichit has deadbolted the hatch at the top of the stair and rigged the security camera to play a looped feed of a quiet night, which seems an unlikely feat, until Yuri remembers him saying something about previously being a mechanical engineering graduate.

There’s also a makeshift bar set up along the counter of the kitchenette, a paltry assortment of bottles that Yuri doesn’t care to know the origin of. All in all, it’s a more impressive showing than he would’ve given any of the schemers involved credit for, not that they’ll catch him saying it aloud.

“Glad you came?” Mila asks, sidling up to him.

“I guess I’ll see,” Yuri says.

“My fellow classmates.”

Phichit claps his hands together, and a hush falls over the assembled cadets. From the looks of it, their whole year has turned out for the occasion. Phichit beams at them all.

“First off, I would like to thank you very much for coming. I can guarantee that this will be the best party this dorm has ever seen. And now, if you’ll join me, I have a game for us to play, to start things off.”

“This can’t be good,” Yuri murmurs to Mila, who laughs.

Phichit ushers them all into a misshapen circle on the common room floor, crammed knee to knee against one another, and proceeds to explain the rules. It’s just a bunch of silly challenges, passing a card around without using your hands, or guessing what the person next to you is trying to act out without letting the rest of the group know, and then turning around and trying to do the same. The penalty for losing or for getting caught not paying attention is being subject to some punishment decided by the group. Yuri doesn’t think he wants to know what that would be.

“Simple enough, right? Any questions?”

Yuri raises his hand. “What if we don’t want to play?”

Mila punches his shoulder. Phichit grins at him.

“Too late. Anything else? No? Then let’s begin.”

Yuri tunes out the whole thing almost instantly. There’s no harm in Phichit’s fun, really, except that it isn’t _fun_ to Yuri, though the others seem to be enjoying themselves. He plays along just enough to avoid the penalty, but it isn’t his preferred variety of antics.

Ten minutes in and they have their first victim. It’s Victor’s turn to pass the card to Katsuki, so of course he tries to do it with his lips, and of course Katsuki goes bright red, before forgoing the barrier of the card entirely, and for a few moments it seems like Phichit is going to have to physically pull the two of them apart, which may be why he gives them the particularly vindictive sentence to go knock on Admiral Baranovskaya’s door and then run away. It takes another ten minutes of convincing just to get Katsuki to go through with it, but he does, and he and Victor somehow manage to return in one piece.

“I thought for sure she’d catch us,” Victor says, “but you should see how fast Yuuri can run when his life is on the line.”

“She still had her uniform on when she answered the door,” Katsuki says. “I think she sleeps in it.”

They both look intimidated.

The game continues. At one point, Yuri catches Otabek’s gaze across the room, and the other cadet raises an eyebrow, subtle and serious, but for a moment something in his eyes seems to dance, and Yuri can’t quite stifle his grin.

“Now that’s a look I haven’t seen on you in a long time,” Mila says, so of course Yuri scowls at her, and by the time he glances back Otabek has turned away again.

“Why can’t you mind your own business for once?” he mutters, too distracted to give the words the venom they deserve.

“I just like to see you happy. Is that so wrong?”

“Plisetsky, Babicheva, get your heads back in the game.” Phichit’s grin is even more infuriating than Mila’s. “That’s a penalty for both of you, and you know what that means.”

“That’s it,” Yuri says, standing. “Screw your game, Chulanont. You promised us a party.”

“If it helps,” says Christophe Giacometti, with the particular brand of cavalier sensuality that accompanies absolutely everything he says and does, “back home I trained in the art of pole dancing.”

Phichit and Victor both are instantly delighted by the idea, but Katsuki, with an expression that can only speak to some unknown past horror at the mention of the subject, distracts his friend with the reminder that he brought music to share.

“That way,” he says, “we all can dance.”

By some miracle it actually works, and the circle of cadets is broken up into pairs or huddles as the celebration moves on to its next phase. Sara Crispino spirits Mila away for a dance so quickly Yuri doesn’t even have time to rib her about it. He’s about to slink away, but Victor has managed to pry himself away from Katsuki long enough to harass Yuri into engaging in some kind of ridiculous dance battle (which he wins, of course). After that Yuri ducks his way over to the bar and pours himself some vodka, which he is certain either came from Victor’s personal stock, picked up on their last break, or else someone was daring enough to raid the officers’ lounge.

Another hour in and Yuri finds himself standing alone against one of the back walls, on his second cup now, though for the past twenty minutes he hasn’t been able to muster the resolve to drink more than half of it. Mila has disappeared somewhere, and a sweep of the room reveals that Sara is also suspiciously absent. It also reveals Victor and Katsuki kissing so fiercely that Yuri would feel like an intruder if the two of them cared even a little bit about privacy. All the same, his face grows hot, with rage and something else underneath it, and he turns away.

And there’s Otabek Altin, standing not two meters away, hands fixed loosely around a cup of his own, absorbed in his thoughts. Heart beating just a little bit faster now, Yuri walks up to him, before he can convince himself not to.

“Enjoying yourself?”

Otabek blinks, shaking himself out of his reverie. “I could ask you the same question.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Otabek has the audacity to smile at him. “You can’t tell me you’re really so blind to your own reputation.”

Yuri stuffs down a growl. “That an insult, Altin?”

“I’m trying to goad you into dancing with me, Plisetsky. Will you deign to accompany me?”

“When you put it like that…”

Yuri sets down his drink, and then grabs Otabek’s wrist and drags him into the thick of the party, cursing him from here to Moscow for this power he holds over him, temporary as Yuri assures himself it is, all because he issued a challenge. It is this, and only this, that Yuri finds irresistible.

Surrounded by their peers, a few of whom smirk at them with knowing glances—Yuri responds to each one of them with the appropriate hand gesture, and is only glad Mila is not here to humiliate him further—Otabek looks uncertain for only a moment, and then pulls his wrist out of Yuri’s grasp, sliding it instead around the small of his back in a single, fluid motion. This time Yuri is unable to think of a properly brash reply, so he settles for a questioning frown that he hopes looks sardonic and blasé, and not simply confused.

“Something wrong?” Otabek asks, his expression the epitome of innocence, but that teasing smile is still hiding in his eyes. He’s incorrigible, incongruous with the Otabek Altin Yuri has spent the past three years slowly, in his own way, getting to know.

He covers the thought with a derisive snort. “I thought you said you wanted to dance with me.”

“Now who’s the one tossing around insults?”

The song, some American pop number from whatever shitty playlist Phichit ripped from the music files in the Academy’s information database, swells to a chorus, and Otabek thrusts Yuri back into a low dip, his spine bent nearly parallel with the floor, and swings him around.

“Don’t underestimate my technique.”

Yuri lets out a small, involuntary squeak, balance thrown, and then he blushes furiously. “I never took you for the bragging sort.”

“I’m full of surprises.”

That, Yuri can’t dispute. In a softer voice, Otabek slips into Russian. “I used to dance. Back in Almaty.”

“No way, you mean professionally?”

“For a time.”

“And then you came here?”

“Something like that.”

The song finishes, but Otabek doesn’t pull away, and neither does Yuri. They relax into a slow sway, closer now, but still at arm’s length. Yuri looks up at Otabek and sees his gaze has drifted to the window, pensive and inscrutable.

“Otabek.”

Yuri has never called him by his first name before, but if he’s surprised he doesn’t show it. He doesn’t even look over at him, but nods once, just slightly, to let him know he’s listening.

“Whatever happens tomorrow, wherever we get assigned, I want you to know…”

Yuri stops and curses himself, the alcohol, this damn party, whatever it was that made him start a sentence with something so cliché. Otabek is looking at him now, brow furrowed just slightly, waiting patiently for him to continue.

“What I mean is, good luck out there. And don’t disappear on me just because you’re assigned to a different mission.”

“You never know. We could end up on the same crew.”

“They won’t put more than a couple of duelists on the same ship. Equal distribution of resources, and all that. We won’t be together.”

“We might,” Otabek says, like there’s a second half to the statement, only it never comes. _We might get lucky._

Yuri decides to drop the subject and allow him that small, foolish half-hope. They dance together through the end of the song, and then Otabek steps away.

“How long until Baranovskaya busts us for this, do you think?”

“I’m surprised she hasn’t found us out already,” Yuri says. “Maybe she’s ignoring us intentionally?”

“That will be the day.”

The party lingers on. Phichit is probably determined to see the sunrise—so to speak—but by 0200 hours Yuri is feeling sufficiently tired. Otabek has already murmured his apologies and gone to bed, and Yuri decides to do likewise. The crowd has thinned out, now. Phichit is in a somewhat one-sided conversation with Seung Gil-Lee on one of the couches, while Leo and Guang-hong are collapsed into a snoring heap. At the center of the floor in between, Victor and Katsuki sway in time to the music. How many of them will Yuri see again, after tomorrow?

He turns his head away. He’d promised himself he wouldn’t get sentimental, and especially not over people he can’t even reasonably call his friends. Still, it will be strange adjusting to a new group of familiar faces, after living with these ones for so long.

He slips through the door to his room. No one has returned yet, except for Otabek, who seems to already be asleep. He looks different like this—vulnerable, in a way the wakeful Otabek will never quite allow. Perhaps he’s not alone in that.

Yuri realizes it’s probably weird, staring at him like this, so he turns quickly away. He’s envious of Otabek, that must be what it is, because tired as he feels, it is a long time before sleep finds him.

* * *

When Yuri comes in, Otabek is not, in fact, asleep. He quickly pretends otherwise, hesitant to face the awkwardness of lying there, obviously awake, when the two of them are the only ones in the room together. (Is it really a bit of awkwardness he’s afraid of, or…)

Yuri climbs into the bunk above him—three years later and this is still the arrangement—and settles in. Otabek rolls over, trying not to think about him, or about tomorrow, or anything beyond the steady rhythm of his heart in the dark. He, too, finds that sleep eludes him.

 

 

_II. Flung Into Space_

They are not assigned to the same ship.

Instead, to Yuri’s utter chagrin, he ends up with Katsuki, who accepts the situation with the grace and politeness of someone long accustomed to not quite getting his way. For his part, the only thing that stops Yuri from marching up to the Board of Executives the second the graduation ceremony is over and demanding a change—because as bad as this is for him, the least Katsudon deserves is a spot on a boat with _his own fucking husband_ —is Otabek. Even from the other end of the stage, he must be able to see Yuri’s rage boiling, because he shakes his head in warning, imperceptible to anyone who hasn’t spent the past hour casting brief, furtive glances in his direction. And Yuri is reminded that the graduation is being televised back on Earth, where there are hoards of people watching who still remember him as the youngest champion in history to win at the fighting rings of Moscow’s international tournament, still the reigning recordholder for the quickest match finish, even so many years later.

Yuri gives the slightest of nods in response, and then focuses his attention back out on the audience, chin held high, fists clenched behind his back, nails digging deep into his skin. The ceremony is longer than necessary, but not so long that Yuri has to resort to tearing out clumps of his own hair, and afterwards the graduates are dismissed to wander for a few hours before collecting their things and shipping off.

Mila finds him first, and of course she’s thrilled because she ended up with Sara as her shipmate, and even as she’s telling him how sorry she is he wants to scream at her.

“It’s not so bad,” she says. “Would you rather have ended up with Chris, or JJ? Or even Victor.”

“If I’m on the same ship as Katsuki, then I’m assigned with Victor by extension.”

“Fair point.” She ruffles his hair and he hisses slightly, though she only laughs. “Keep your chin up. I know it feels like it sucks now, being on a smaller ship with a partner who shouldn’t be there any more than you, but if you can wait a couple years and move up a rank or two, the Board’ll be much more likely to listen to your case for being transferred somewhere else.”

She’s right, although it doesn’t make him any less resentful. He stalks off, preferring to stew for a bit rather than be forced to listen to reason. He almost doesn’t mind Victor’s hysterics, when he stumbles across him with Katsuki on his way back to their room for a proper stew. It’s ridiculous, but at least it’s raw.

Most people are still in the reception hall, taking advantage of this last opportunity to catch up with or say goodbye to the friends and family members in attendance, so the residential wing is mostly empty when Yuri gets there.

The room is empty, too—or so he thinks at first, but just as he’s stalking over to his bunk he sees Otabek straighten up from behind a suitcase.

“Oh, Yuri. Hey.”

“Leaving already?”

Otabek shakes his head. “My departure slot isn’t for a couple more hours. Right now I just needed to grab something to show my mother.”

“Is she here?” Yuri asks, and then slaps himself internally. _Of course she’s here, dumbass, or what would be the point of mentioning her?_ But Otabek only smiles, a soft, unguarded expression, the sort that can only be built on the affection of the memories that have conjured it.

“Yes,” he says. “I wish my younger sisters could have made it, but…” He trails off, and looks back at Yuri. “Do you have family here today?”

Yuri hesitates, but Otabek, with a quick, searching look, smiles at him again.

“You can come meet mine, if you want to.”

Otabek’s mother is a short, kind woman, soft-spoken like her son, with the same cadence to her Russian. After a few minutes Yuri draws back to allow them some more time together, but Otabek puts a hand on his arm. His mother takes one look at the pair of them and vanishes into the crowd of the reception hall with a speed that Yuri envies.

“You’re leaving soon, so I suppose I should say goodbye now. We may not see each other again before you go.”

Yuri pulls a face at him. “Don’t tell me you’re going soft.”

Otabek ignores the remark. “I wish you and Yuuri Katsuki all the best.”

Yuri scuffs at the ground with the tip of his boot. “I’ll see how it goes.”

“Katsuki might sometimes cave under pressure, but he’s still one of the most competent people here. He will make a good shipmate for you.”

Yuri bites his lip to keep from saying, _but he won’t be you_ , because it’s such a foolish, futile thing, and friends from a distance is surely better than having no friends at all.

“I guess,” he settles on instead.

“I almost forgot,” Otabek says, and somehow he musters half a mischievous grin. “Congratulations on making it to the top.”

Yuri tries to grin back, though he thinks he falls a little short. “Thanks. I told you I’d get there, didn’t I?” He pauses. “Congratulations to you, too. Even though you should’ve ranked in the top three.”

Otabek shrugs modestly. “Fourth isn’t bad. Part of me is happy I made it to graduation at all.”

“You’ll have to do better than that if you want to keep up with me.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” He glances over the rest of the room. “I should go find my mother.”

Yuri checks the clock on the back wall and realizes it’s grown later than he thought.

“I should too,” he says. “Go, I mean.” He doesn’t move.

“I…” Otabek stops, weighing his words. “I’ll see you again, Yuri.”

Yuri nods. They share a parting look, and it seems weird, to just go their separate ways right now, without anything else between them, so Yuri offers his hand to shake. After a beat Otabek takes it, holding on for just a fraction of a second longer than normal, or maybe that’s just Yuri’s imagination. And then he walks away.

“I think you’re going to miss him.”

Yuri jumps and whirls around at the voice. Katsuki is standing beside him, gazing calmly in the direction of Otabek’s retreating back. Yuri frowns, but instead of firing off a retort, he only manages a sigh.

“What’s it to you?”

“Just an observation,” Katsuki says, though his expression is just a little too sly for that.

 _Has he always been this way_ , Yuri thinks, _or is it just that I’m only noticing now?_ Katsuki might be easily written off as passive because he’s shy, but Yuri’s beginning to realize that he has more of a backbone than anyone gives him credit for. He did make the top five for their graduating class, and that’s a competitive field.

“What about Victor?” Yuri asks. “I know you’re going to complain to me about missing him every damn day.”

“Probably,” Katsuki says, not even bothering to deny it. Well. Yuri did witness their teary goodbyes, after all, so what was he expecting?

“You could petition the Board. You both got such high rankings, I’m sure they’d have to listen.”

“Victor and I have already discussed it.” He makes a brave attempt at a smile. “For now, though, you’re stuck with me.”

They pack up their belongings together, and then board the taxi that’ll take them to the shuttle hangar. The trip feels shorter than it has in the past, and soon the two of them are faced with their ride to their new post, and whatever their new future will bring them. Katsuki hesitates at the foot of the gangway, glancing back down the airlocked hall, though Victor’s transport has already departed. Yuri bites his lip, and then takes Katsuki’s arm, stepping onto the shuttle alongside him.

“Let’s get the hell out of this place.”

* * *

Of all the colonies in United Earth’s expansive domain, Serpentine is said to have fared the worst. Otabek wouldn’t know—he doesn’t have anything to compare it to, after all—but he wouldn’t doubt it if it was true. Duelists are trained for elegance and diplomacy, for sensitive individual missions and lightning-quick close-range combat, but here he is nothing more than another field grunt, because that is what his superiors have decreed this planet needs.

There have been separatists on Serpentine since before Otabek was born, almost since the first settlement here was founded. The politics that surround the constant fighting are complex and bureaucratic and not very transparent to those who aren’t directly involved, so Otabek does his job and tries not to think about it.

Instead, without ever quite intending to, he thinks about he past. Yuri would berate him for it, but in a place where his future is so tenuously connected to how fast he can pull a trigger, Otabek will gladly retreat into the certainty of things already behind him.

He thinks about his mother, who had never before left Almaty when she came to his graduation, with her warm eyes and her sad smile, hugging him so tight he thought his bones would break before he could board the shuttle that would take him here. He thinks about his little sisters jumping on their bed in the attic room the three of them used to share, begging him to braid their hair, before they became too old and too cool for that sort of thing. He thinks, sometimes, of Yuri.

Otabek can remember seeing him on the old TV in his uncle’s bar, where the reception was always fuzzy at best, but even then he couldn’t miss the intensity of Yuri Plisetsky’s gaze. _The eyes of a soldier_ , he thought, at the time, never knowing the boy would one day leave the rings to become just that. Now they both are.

Sometimes, late at night in the trenches, when things are less bad than usual and he’s able to steal a precious few moments for something that tries to approximate sleep, he pictures Yuri’s eyes, the weight of them burning through him to something clenched fierce and tight in the center of his chest. Then comes the cascade of other images—Yuri’s gritted teeth over an exam, the feline grace with which he executes a triple kick, the taunting smile he gives so easily, the softer one he doesn’t. Otabek has no real pictures of him, but he prefers to hold Yuri in his memories, fragile as they are, where he can guard him close, unmarred by the battle at hand.

Sometimes, on the miraculous occasion that they both have reception, they’ll message each other, occasionally to make inquires about their respective wars and duties and states of aliveness, but more often to discuss absolutely anything else. Yuri is particularly fond of sending him pictures of the stray cats he always manages to find in the colonies he visits.

 _Our idiot captain won’t let me bring any of them on the ship_ , he’ll write, _which is completely unfair, so you have to save these for me, Otabek._ And he does, until his device runs out of storage capacity, and he is forced to make sacrifices.

_**Yuri Plisetsky, 22:07:** Guess who stopped by for a visit_

This accompanied by a shot of Yuuri Katsuki being just short of full-on tackled by his husband, who Yuri has taken the liberty of adorning with drawn-on devil horns and a curly mustache.

_**Otabek Altin, 22:13:** What happened?_

_**Yuri Plisetsky, 22:14:** Victor got shore leave, so Katsuki wrangled the captain into approving a vacation of his own, and now they’re both headed back to earth together for a month in St. Petersburg_

_**Otabek Altin, 22:16:** I would have taken Victor for the sort of person to vacation on the most fanciful planet he could think of._

_**Yuri Plisetsky, 22:19:** They want to show each other off to their families. Which is ridiculous. It’s not like they haven’t met them before. Like maybe at the WEDDING._

_**Yuri Plisetsky, 22:20:** Do you ever want to go back _

Back to what? A city that was already dying before he left? Or perhaps to some idealized past, before the money ran out and the repertory company folded, but Damira still had university bills to pay, and their mother was still working late Saturday nights, and Otabek cursed himself for not making a more useful career choice. But he could shoot a gun, and a military paycheck guaranteed a steady income. His mother was the one to suggest the Academy itself.

“If you can be the best, you’ll be the safest.”

Otabek hopes she doesn’t know where he is now.

_**Otabek Altin, 23:52:** Sometimes. Do you? _

_**Yuri Plisetsky, 23:58:** Sometimes I think I do. Sometimes…_

_**Yuri Plisetsky, 23:59:** Anyway, they’re both staying on the ship tonight and they’re being completely disgusting about it. If I commit double murder I’m counting on you to bail me out of space prison _

_**Otabek Altin, 00:03:** I’ll delete this conversation so the authorities won’t know it’s premeditated. Bail’s pretty expensive, though. Maybe you should just keep making sarcastic commentary instead. _

_**Yuri Plisetsky, 00:06:** They’re making out now. I am IN THE ROOM WITH THEM, not that they care. God _

_**Yuri Plisetsky, 00:07:** I don’t care if Victor says I’ll understand when I get a husband of my own, IF that were to even happen I would absolutely not do one tenth of the crap they make me put up with _

_**Otabek Altin, 00:08:** No mention of what you make me put up with, I see. _

_**Yuri Plisetsky, 00:08:** You know you like putting up with me _

Otabek freezes at that, the playful accusation, turning it over in his head with care. What can he say, when it’s true and when Yuri is so many star systems away? He settles for changing the subject.

_**Otabek Altin, 00:19:** Didn’t you tell me you saw a very nice cat on your last surface mission? _

So Yuri, of course, rushes to fill him in on every detail, lamenting his inability to get a proper picture. And, of course, Otabek pretends he isn’t grinning into his pillow when the first night shift comes to rouse him for his turn.

* * *

The first time Yuri encounters Otabek in the post-Academy world is at a refugee camp on a startup colony in the Varna system, ten months after graduation, completely by accident. Yuri’s ship touches down for a quick refuel on a run to V-16, and there he is.

He’s past the age to have grown taller while they were apart, though Yuri notes that his shoulders have gotten broader, and there’s a new scar running down his left temple, curving across his cheekbone. His hair is longer, looped into a lazy bun at the back of his head, but he’s kept his undercut. He breaks into a grin as he catches sight of Yuri’s crew, not quite wide but easier than any he ever gave back at the Academy, reflexive.

“Plisetsky,” he calls, motioning him over to where he sits open-legged atop an overturned packing crate, wrapping his arm with gauze from a medkit.

“You look rough,” Yuri says flatly, folding his arms across his chest, and now Otabek’s grin broadens, if only for just a moment.

“The colonies on the next planet over have been torn up with fighting for the past few months, so we’ve been rushing refugee groups out here, trying to set up a stable camp until the conflict can be resolved. We were attacked by a pack of wolves as we touched down last night.”

Yuri nods. “And the face job?”

Otabek reaches an instinctive hand to brush against the scar, expression darkening briefly. “The trenches on Serpentine. I’m lucky we landed this mission, or I’d still be there.” He gives his head a shake, returning to the polite warmth that a reunion with a former colleague necessitates. “But that’s enough about me. How have you been, Yuri?”

He glances back at his crew, who are all throwing curious looks his way, except for the captain, who’s busy meeting with the director of Otabek’s outfit.

“I can tell you everything,” he says, “but I’d better go deal with them first.”

It takes a few glares at his shipmates and a short conversation with the captain for him to be dismissed, and then he’s following Otabek through the center of the camp, back to his private tent. There isn’t much inside, only a bedroll and a washbasin and another packing crate that serves as both chair and table. Otabek gestures to it with a sardonic twist at the corner of his mouth.

“Have a seat, if you want.”

Yuri obliges, and Otabek stretches back onto his blankets, letting out a soft grunt as the tension ebbs out of him. He props his head up on one hand and turns so he’s facing Yuri, nodding at him to start talking.

“Since our last conversation, my ship’s been moved to the Durnam system, to mediate the territory disputes there. It’s frustratingly dull.”

“You’ll have to learn how to be a diplomat if you want to make Admiral someday.”

Yuri rolls his eyes. “The government can bite me. I’ve advanced half a star already.”

“Then we’re in the same position. You see, you can’t keep beating me forever.”

“You just wait. Oh!” He remembers the other news he has to share. “So Katsuki’s been moved to the same ship as Victor.”

“Really? You should pass on my congratulations. How’d they manage that?”

“They sent in an appeal for a transfer right after graduation, but it took a while for all the paperwork to go through. Still, they got an official apology for all the trouble it caused them from the Head of Staff herself.”

“Impressive.”

“It’s definitely more than Victor deserves, but at least now he can stop sending me mopey messages every five minutes asking how ‘my sweet and precious Yuuri’ is doing, like he can’t just ask the man himself. And every time I try to complain to Katsuki about it he just laughs at me.”

Otabek’s shoulders shake with silent laughter of his own, his face screwed up in a concentrated effort not to wound Yuri’s dignity, and something hard lodges itself in Yuri’s throat, shooting down to curl like a coil of heat in his stomach.

“Anyway,” he says, and now suddenly he has to fight to keep his voice level, “now there’s an opening in our crew, so maybe you could put in a request.”

Otabek’s face grows somber again.

“You have no idea how much…” he says, and stops. “Unfortunately, I am needed here.”

Before Yuri can reply, his communicator buzzes, and he pulls it out with an annoyed growl.

_**Mila Babicheva, 11:23:** How’s Otabek?_

_**Yuri Plisetsky, 11:23:** Fuck you, I’ve been here for twenty minutes, you can’t possibly know that we’re in the same place already_

_**Mila Babicheva, 11:24:** Sara’s cousin is his ship’s first helmsman, who just sent her a rather surprised message to ask if Otabek had ever made any friends at the academy because he’d just disappeared with a brash-looking stranger from an incoming military vessel_

_**Yuri Plisetsky, 11:25:** You’re turning into Phichit_

_**Mila Babicheva, 11:25:** I’ll take that as a compliment_

Yuri shakes his head, sliding the device back in his pocket.

“Sorry,” he tells Otabek. “Mila says hello.”

“She knows you’re here?”

“She’s a true menace. Come on.” He flops down next to Otabek so their faces are close together for the camera, holding up his middle finger between them and sticking out his tongue.

_**Mila Babicheva, 11:27:** Cute_

_**Mila Babicheva, 11:27:** You two make sure to use protection_

Yuri yelps and drops the communicator, and Otabek gives him a look of mild concern.

“What did she say?”

“N—Nothing.”

Yuri can feel his cheeks getting warm. He and Mila have always enjoyed trading obscenities about everyone else, but somehow it’s different when the focus of the lewd comments is him, and with Otabek, of all people.

Otabek, who is only a few inches away from him after so many months of separation, looking objectively gross, like he hasn’t been able to shower in a couple weeks and has been wearing the same uniform for approximately that amount of time. Right now it’s summer on this part of the planet, so he’s shed his outer coat, lying there in cargo pants that have seen better days and a tank top that bares his admittedly considerable biceps.

“What is it?” he asks, in a low voice that sends a shiver through Yuri’s insides, and he realizes he’s staring.

“Sorry,” he says. “I was just—thinking.”

“I’ve been thinking too,” says Otabek. “Since we left the Academy, I mean. Yuri—

Before he can continue, the captain pops his head through the slit at the tent’s entrance.

“Thought I’d find you here. We’re all refueled and ready to go now. Wheels up in five.”

Yuri has never hated a person more than in that instant. Before reaction can catch up with his rage, the captain is out the door again, and Otabek is standing up, offering him a hand. For a brief, wild moment, Yuri contemplates grabbing hold and pulling Otabek down on top of him, but he comes to his senses and swallows the thought, along with any others that might accompany it, and lets Otabek help him to his feet.

“Until next time, then.”

“Yeah.” With a reluctance that is a bit concerning, Yuri lets go of Otabek’s hand and gives a mock salute. “Don’t get yourself killed out there.”

“Same to you.”

They stand, half-hesitant, across from one another, until Otabek coughs.

“I’ll—I can show you out, then.”

“Right.”

Yuri follows him back through the camp to where they parked the ship. The engineer and her assistant are running around the outside, finishing all the last-minute pre-takeoff checks, and the captain stands at the top of the gangway, motioning the last of the crew’s stragglers inside. Yuri looks back at Otabek.

“I guess this is goodbye.”

He nods. Then, too quickly for Yuri to react to it, he leans forward and pulls him into a brief, one-armed hug, before backing away again and retreating towards the camp with nothing but a final wave. Yuri stands there a moment, a little numb, and raises his hand too late in response. Then he turns around and climbs back on his ship.

* * *

 

_**Yuri Plisetsky, 22:53:** what were you going to say? _

_**Yuri Plisetsky, 00:24:** otabek??? _

_**Otabek Altin, 01:04:** It was nothing. I was thinking that it seems like we’re both so much busier since we graduated. I wish you luck on the rest of your journey, Yuri. _

Otabek lowers the communicator, cursing himself as a coward and a fool for falling back on such an obvious lie. But what else can he do?

* * *

Two years into his assignment, Yuri is bumped up to the position of second lieutenant, patted on the back, and transferred to another ship. It’s bigger than his old one, and equipped with decidedly better communications amenities, so as soon as he’s able Yuri elbows his way into the free-use com station and sends a request for a video call.

After only a minute or two Otabek picks up. The quality is a little grainy on his end, but he seems pleasantly surprised. “Yuri?”

“Miss me?”

Otabek quirks an eyebrow. “Always.”

And even though he’s teasing, Yuri feels his heartbeat stutter for a fraction of a second. He pushes past it.

“Have you heard the news? I know Phichit always finds out about this sort of thing and spreads it around to everyone, but it hasn’t been that long yet.”

“Should I be worried?”

“You should be impressed,” Yuri says, holding his new rank insignia closer to the camera for Otabek to see. “Am I beating you now?”

“Only by one.”

“That still means I’m technically your superior, right?”

“Somehow I have the feeling that you’re going to be insufferable about this.”

“I can’t imagine why.” Yuri grins at him. “Also, the higher-ups are forcing me to take shore leave for a couple weeks. They say it’s not healthy to keep ignoring my vacation time.”

“I can’t imagine why.” Otabek leans in a little. “Where will you be going?”

“Actually, I was thinking that if you can get the time off, maybe we could go somewhere together.” He rushes on before Otabek can politely turn him down. “Not for the whole time, since I promised Mila I’d meet up with her, and then she got it in her head to tell Victor, and now they’re making a whole stupid thing about it. I just thought since it’s been more than a year since we’ve actually seen each other…

Otabek nods. “I’d like that.”

“It won’t interfere with your duties, will it? I’d hate for you to accuse me of sabotaging you in our rank war.”

“I can make it work.” He adds, as a sly afterthought, “And I can win our competition whether you sabotage me or not.”

“Keep dreaming.”

They talk for a while longer, swapping their usual insults and anecdotes, until the clock nags at Yuri, reminding him that his next shift starts in only a few minutes. He hangs up with what he believes is only a dignified amount of reluctance after extracting another promise from Otabek that he will definitely ask about time off. Even though the conversation is over, the nerves, or whatever they are, in the pit of his stomach haven’t quite settled. Odd.

He shakes his head at himself and goes back to work.

* * *

They opt for a planet neither of them has ever visited before.

“That way,” Yuri says, “if it’s lame we’ll just leave without consequences.”

Otabek doubts their coming or going would be of much consequence even on a planet they’d been to a thousand times, but he doesn’t say it, because the air is supposed to be nice on Myri. He must admit, too, that there is some appeal in the total anonymity of it. They will be no longer soldiers, if only for a short time.

They stay the first night in a small city that reminds him vaguely of Almaty, nestled between rolling mountain ranges and a mass of sky. He arrives first, and waits at the docking port for Yuri’s transport to get in.

When the ship touches down and Yuri steps off the gangway, barricaded behind a gaggle of locals returning from business or vacations of their own, Otabek’s heart stops for just a moment. Yuri’s hair, loose and mussed slightly by the wind, catches the sunlight in a way that doesn’t seem quite fair, and Otabek thinks, for no longer than the amount of time he allows the words to cross his mind, that Yuri is the most incredible person he has ever set eyes to.

All of this and so much more churning in his mind, and the only thing he can manage to say is, “Where to first?”

Yuri takes a slow, sauntering step towards him, and thrusts his luggage in Otabek’s arms.

“I’m hungry,” he says. “Take me to dinner.”

They don’t bother dropping their belongings at the hotel first. Otabek only has the one bag, plus Yuri’s, now—travel light and harm won’t find you, or however the saying goes. Instead, they wander through the city, pausing outside every restaurant they come across to peruse the menu listings. Otabek would happily have ducked into the first place they came to and scarfed down enough food to pass into a comfortable oblivion, but today they have the luxury of being picky.

“What about seafood?” Yuri asks, squinting at the sign outside their latest stop. “I haven’t had that in ages.”

“We’re not near the sea, though. It won’t be fresh.”

“You’re right,” says Yuri. “I could kill for fresh right now.”

In the end he can’t tear himself away from an advertisement for pirozhki, murmuring something Otabek doesn’t catch about his grandfather, in the window of a little shop off a bend in a road that winds like a serpent through the south of the city. The day has been transformed into a dusky midsummer evening, and from their table near the entrance Otabek and Yuri watch the streetlamps flicker on, one by one.

“It’s amazing what people have been able to do out here,” Yuri says. Otabek gives him a curious look.

“I just mean…back home, in the rings especially, people used to talk about the colonies like they were at the barest edge of civilization. But this place…in less than a century they’ve built so much.”

“It makes Earth seem like the edge.”

Not every planet has done as well as this one, of course. That’s why he and Yuri still have jobs.

Their hotel is the more humble of the two in the city. Tomorrow, they will hike out to a small cabin in the mountains, a remnant from one of the earliest settler colonies on this planet, where they will stay the remainder of the week. Otabek thinks it will be peaceful there.

Tonight they retire early to their room, lacking the energy to sightsee. Otabek should probably be worn out by the journey, but he feels a strange restlessness, like all the nerves below his skin are buzzing. Yuri, too, is reluctant to settle in to sleep so soon.

“Otabek,” he says, with a funny lilt in his voice, half teasing and half something else, “didn’t you tell me once that you were a dancer?”

“I can distantly recall letting such a confession slip.”

Yuri shakes his head at him. “Distantly. Sure.”

He bends over the radio in the corner, once archaic but now a standard everywhere for the conveyance of on and off-world news, fiddling with the tuner until a slow stream of music graces the night air, a gentle string song from another era. Yuri holds out his hand.

“Will you teach me?”

“It’s been so long since I danced properly,” Otabek says, but his feet take a few steps forward of their own accord.

“It’s not like I’ll know the difference.”

“Would you be satisfied with anything less than perfection?” Otabek asks, and thinks, will he ever be?

Yuri bites his lip. “I could be satisfied with you.” He frowns suddenly and crosses his arms in defiance. “So don’t be an ass and show me.”

Under the intensity of his gaze, Otabek swallows down the protest that this room is much too cramped for dancing and nods. He tries to do a few piqué turns to warm up, but ends up crashing into the table and hopping on one foot to the edge of his bed, where he drops to a seat, wincing.

“Weak,” Yuri says, and now it’s Otabek’s turn to throw him a heated look.

“Now who’s being an ass?”

But perhaps Yuri isn’t the only one who can’t resist a challenge, because Otabek stands up, ignoring his throbbing left knee, and puts a delicate hand to the small of Yuri’s back.

“First your posture.”

Yuri’s spine stiffens like a string pulled taut, and he whirls around to face him. “And now?”

“Now…”

Lightly Otabek adjusts the line of his shoulders, coaxes his feet into the proper position. He moves so that he is standing behind Yuri, one hand at his waist, the other guiding his arm placement. He leads him into a slow tango, a dance Otabek hasn’t done in a truly long time, but Yuri is a quick learner, and so he makes himself remember.

They fall into their beds hours later, past the time they should have gone to sleep, though neither of them much care. They sleep so late the next morning they’re nearly thrown out of their hotel still in their nightclothes, but Otabek manages to restrain Yuri from doing anything that would dishonor himself and apologizes profusely to the staff.

“You should’ve let me slug just one of them,” Yuri says, later, as they’re hiking up to the cabin. Otabek shrugs.

“They were just doing their jobs,” he says.

Yuri shakes his head at him, and keeps walking. It’s a wonderful clear morning, and as they make their ascent they can catch a nice glimpse of the city below them glimmering in the sunlight, the mountains behind it cutting the blue sky to pieces. Otabek stops for a moment to take it all in, and after a beat, Yuri comes to stand next to him.

“I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen a city from so high up.” He pauses. “I never left Moscow before the Academy, and most of my missions so far have been aboard the ship.”

“I never knew.”

“Did you ever travel? Before, I mean.”

“A little. I performed in Beijing once or twice, and all over Russia. That was long ago.”

“You sound like an old man.” Yuri turns and heads back up the path. “Come on. I’m getting hungry, so let’s try to get there by lunchtime.”

Otabek gives one last look out at the scenery, and follows him.

They do reach the cabin at an hour that is suitable for a midday meal, so they break out a few of their provisions and tuck in. Half of the stuff they’ve dragged up here at least must be food, some of it ship fare they brought with them or picked up in spaceports during the journey over, and some purchased hastily from the nearest grocery on their way out this morning. Otabek figures if they’re really at risk of running out, they can just hike back to the city for a day trip and stock up. But it’s not like they’ll be here long.

After lunch, they acquaint themselves with their lodgings. The main floor is two rooms—a larger combination living area/kitchenette, with a bathroom branching off at one side. Next to that is a ladder that leads up to a loft with a bed and a semicircle of a window. Otabek tosses his bag on the end of the couch.

“I’ll sleep here.”

Yuri shrugs. “More bed for me, I guess.” He starts up the ladder, then pauses, looking back at Otabek with an impertinent grin. “But if you get too cold down there, I might let you climb in.”

Otabek busies himself with laying out his belongings to hide the smile tugging at his lips.

He spends the afternoon stretched out on the front porch, while Yuri goes exploring.

“Don’t go too far,” he calls after him, but he doesn’t say anything else, or Yuri will accuse Otabek of thinking he can’t take care of himself.

It’s been a long time since he’s been able to lay like this in the sun, exposed, eyes closed, unburdened by obligations or time constraints. He drifts in and out of consciousness in a state that is on the pleasant side of sleepy, without surrendering to sleep entirely. Eventually Yuri returns and shoves him over, and they make dinner. Afterwards, they put on the radio, and Yuri makes fun of some of the newscasters while listening avidly to others, and Otabek pulls out a book. It’s a quiet evening, just the sort Otabek enjoys, but for Yuri, he thinks, a night like this has been an acquired taste.

The last newsfeed of the night fades into a musical interlude, and Yuri stands from where he’s been curled up at the end of the couch. This time, Otabek is the one to hold out his hand.

“Shall we?”

They dance, again, into the night.

The next several days pass in a similar routine. They sleep late and cobble together breakfast from the previous evening’s leftovers, and then head out for whatever adventure awaits. They climb to the highest peak they can reach and eat shashlik with their legs dangling off the edge of the cliff face, nothing but a wide swath of trees and sky to be seen.

On a walk during their third day they discover a watering hole that’s fed into by a small stream. The pool is clear enough that Otabek can see straight through to the bottom, and the current is practically nonexistent. It’s already growing into the hottest day so far, so without really thinking about it, Otabek peels off his shirt and jumps in. Yuri cuts him an amused look.

“You’re going to be dripping all over the carpet when we get back. Unless you’re hiding an extra set of clothes I don’t know about?”

Perhaps the heat really is getting to him, because he finds it in him to grin. “I could be hiding a lot of things that you don’t know about.”

It could be the exertion, or there’s a faint blush tinged across Yuri’s cheeks. Without hesitating another moment he strips with brutal efficiency down to only his boxers, and some version of politeness Otabek carried with him before war or even dance hall dressing rooms rendered such things meaningless nearly compels him to look away, but he has lost much of his own modesty, and Yuri never had any to begin with. He stands there, wiry and paler than a winter morning, covering his former embarrassment—or whatever it was—with a valiant return to his usual shameless attitude. He looks Otabek dead in the eye and cocks his hip.

“Are you staring at me?”

Through the block in his throat, Otabek can just muster the words to play along.

“You’ll burn up in this sun,” he says.

“Then I’ll join you.”

He hits the water with a splash that is purely intentional, leaving Otabek no choice but to retaliate in kind. For a while they fight like this, the aggression half joking and half drawn from some pent up reserve, an occupational hazard, though they have always been competitive by nature.

They keep on without rest until they wash up breathless and panting on the shore, collapsed next to each other, while the afternoon sun beats down on their backs and Otabek’s heart is racing so fast, straining to break free of his ribcage and float up to join it. He steadies himself just enough to turn his head and look at Yuri, who is contemplating him with a strange, thoughtful expression on his face, somewhere between fondness and frustration. Another day, perhaps, Otabek would have caught him looking like this and his gaze would have skittered away just as quickly, but today his somber eyes are unwavering, and for a moment every possibility in the universe that is far removed from duty seems to throb between them, an eternity of days that sear like this one followed by simmering, shimmering nights. Otabek stretches out an instinctive hand as if to catch them in his fingers, brushing a wayward strand of hair behind Yuri’s ear, and still his gaze does not flinch.

Slowly, Yuri pushes himself to a seat, tugging Otabek up with him. He grabs one of Otabek’s hands in his own, ferociously, and Otabek thinks that he may never be able to move from this spot again.

“Race you back to the cabin.”

He snatches his clothes from the pile next to him and takes off. Otabek pulls on his shirt, wasting only a few precious seconds, and sprints after him.

He wins, by a hair, but he pays for it when Yuri tackles him just inside the front door, smirking and catapulting himself upright again just as quickly while Otabek can only stare. He disappears to change into dryer clothes, so Otabek does likewise. When he returns a few minutes later the smirk is gone, too, but something of the emotion of it still lingers on Yuri’s face.

“Let’s make dinner. We still have the ingredients for that stew you wanted to try, right?”

For the next hour Otabek’s fingers won’t quite obey his commands, though his brain is too distracted to reprimand them. Every now and then he catches Yuri’s eye, peeling a potato in the sink or setting their places at the table, and it takes him just a little bit too long to look away again.

They eat in silence, not the casual calm of the previous evenings, but a quiet that is thick and charged and oppressive. Yuri drops his spoon on the ground and they both give a slight jump at the noise, then smile abashedly into their food. After dinner they finish the washing up, and then there are no more motions to go through to carry them into the next moment, a realization that sends all the oxygen spiraling from the room.

Yuri migrates to the couch, flopping down to fiddle with the radio as he has every night so far, his hands careful and focused at the tuner. Otabek has the sudden need to do something with his own hands that isn’t walking up behind him and running his fingers through his hair, so he sits cautiously at the other end of the couch and picks up his book, studiously pretending to read.

He can’t tell how much time passes like this, only that eventually he feels Yuri shift and curl against him, and Otabek holds as still as he ever has in his life, and for a few minutes they rest like this, tensed and waiting.

Then Yuri sits up and looks at him, eyes dark with something that sends a shock through him like electricity down a wire, and Otabek remembers that he hasn’t breathed in a while, and that it might be a good idea to start doing so again.

“You can sleep in my bed tonight,” Yuri says. “If you want.”

He says the words a little more self-consciously than he says most things, but below that there is only his infinite determination, not an ounce of shame. Otabek could never dream of tearing his eyes away from him.

“I’d like that,” he says, and there is no lie in his voice. He dares to brush a finger against the braid that coils down past Yuri’s shoulder, and like a snake his hand darts out to latch around Otabek’s wrist.

“Now?” Otabek asks.

Yuri nods.

“Now,” he says.

Otabek lets him lead the way upstairs. He hasn’t yet ventured into this part of the cabin, so concerned with maintaining their fragile boundaries, but he hardly cares to appreciate his new surroundings now. Yuri sits at the edge of the bed, looking up at him expectantly.

Slowly, Otabek comes to kneel behind him, hands moving immediately again to Yuri’s braid, untying the string that keeps it bound with steady fingers. He combs through his hair, so long now, so impractical, but Otabek can’t fault him for that, not the Yuri Plisetsky who does what he likes, how he likes, and powers his way to greatness through sheer force of will. Otabek rests his forehead against the crown of Yuri’s head, and Yuri leans into him.

“Talk to me,” he murmurs.

“What about?”

“Anything. I just like to hear your voice.”

Otabek grins into his hair. “What was that?”

He buries his face in his hands. “Shut up.”

“I thought you wanted me to talk.”

“Fuck you, shut up. You’re so annoying.”

“Am I?” Otabek runs a finger along the smooth underside of Yuri’s jaw, and Yuri’s breath gives a small hitch. Otabek feels disconnected from reality in the manner of a rare and pleasant dream, as though in an instant he will be ripped from the illusion.

His communicator buzzes.

“Ignore it,” Yuri whispers, and Otabek does, but then it goes again, and again. Concerned now, he stands up from the bed to pick it up, and his heart sinks to see his ship captain’s icon at the center of the screen. The message is simple.

Emergency. New mission. Get here as soon as you can.

“Otabek?”

He lowers the device slowly. He can hardly bring himself to look at Yuri.

“That was my CO. I’m—I’ve been put on active duty, effective immediately.”

He can see the implications of his statement working their way through Yuri’s expression.

“And that means…”

“I’m sorry.”

And now Otabek really can’t bear to look at him—how much of the anger that lives within him has spilled over his face, covering but not quite concealing the hurt in his eyes. He whirls around, though he doesn’t walk away.

“Fine,” he says, in a clipped tone that utterly and intentionally belies his words. “Go.”

“Would you have me stay here and be court marshaled?”

It comes out with more venom than Otabek intended, because he can’t deny, in this moment, how tempted he is to do just that—to forfeit the career he has spent years building for just three more days with him. Yuri shoots him a glare.

“What right does he have to pull you out of your vacation?”

“He has every right. It’s what we both signed on for.”

“Not me,” Yuri says, which is a stubborn lie, but Otabek doesn’t have the heart to contradict him.

“In either case,” he says, “I have a duty.”

“And what about your duty to me?”

The intensity of Yuri’s gaze, the heat of it, causes Otabek to falter, but a glance back at his communicator stiffens his resolve.

“I have to go.”

“If you leave now,” Yuri says, like a Hail Mary, “I won’t ever see you again.”

Otabek can’t tell if that’s a threat or a prediction, but it stops him in his tracks either way. His shoulders tense, and he closes his eyes, as if that will enable him to wish this moment away.

Should he—could he even—stay here? Almost as soon as it crosses his mind he has to block off that entire avenue of thought, which leaves him feeling less restless, but also less—anything. He brings himself to look at Yuri again, and his chest is hollow.

I hope that’s not true, is what he means to say, but it comes out as “if that’s what you want.”

And he leaves Yuri there, without another word, without stopping to gather any of his things, only swinging his military jacket off the hook near the door and slipping his communicator into his pocket before he walks out. And for that moment, at least, he is able to deaden himself to how much it will crush him.

* * *

There is no reasonable explanation for why, months after Myri and their fight, Yuri should have the bag of belongings Otabek never took with him still sitting by the foot of his bed onboard his ship, but he does. Yuri felt guilty just leaving the stuff there, the morning after when he was packing up to go two days early, and he couldn’t think of anything to do except take them with him. Now they’re an unpleasant reminder every time he wakes up and glances across the room.

This particular morning is the latest in a long line of days he spends slow to rise after a night of dreams he pretends he didn’t have. He’s better at this some days than others—sometimes he gives in, stokes the fire even when there’s nothing to burn.

On these mornings, he wakes up aching with an angry need that clogs his throat and his thoughts, enough to make him reach for his communicator, only to put it down again when he returns, however dubiously, to his senses. He’s less upset with Otabek than with their conflicting circumstances, now, but a few hundred lightyears is a difficult gap to bridge even at the best of times, and the distance, for more reasons than one, has never been so deeply felt as it is now.

It’s times like these Yuri wishes, in the corner of his brain he’ll never fully acknowledge, that he and Katsuki were still on the same ship. He can be as annoying as Victor when he wants to, but he has a patience that Yuri has never been able to find, and a rational way of thinking when he considers anyone’s problems but his own. ( _Have you tried talking to him?_ he’d say, with that infuriatingly wry half-smile of sympathy, and Yuri would roll his eyes at him and explain the fifty reasons why that would never work.) Not that Yuri would ever think of consulting with him, but if he did, perhaps he wouldn’t be in quite such a sorry state.

Or, at the very least, he could commiserate with someone. The person he usually commiserates with is Otabek, but…

 _Fuck it_ , he thinks, remembering a particular dream that he wishes he could burn from the back of his eyelids, that he indulges in every time he closes his eyes.

_**Yuri Plisetsky, 07:01:** Hey asshole _

_**Yuri Plisetsky, 07:02:** I guess that’s not the best way to start an apology, but I’m not good at apologies. Maybe I am like Victor after all. _

(And part of him thinks he should stop now before he can regret all of it, but…)

_**Yuri Plisetsky, 07:04:** I can’t pretend that the decision you made didn’t hurt me. The two of us can never win, can we? I hate it when you’re halfway across the galaxy. But I understand. _

_**Yuri Plisetsky, 07:05:** Am I too angry, or too demanding? Too unfair to you? Have I driven you away, too? _

_**Yuri Plisetsky, 07:05:** I’m sorry. I didn’t mean what I said on Myri. I want so badly to see you again. _

* * *

The first few times Yuri messages him and Otabek doesn’t reply, he writes it off as a grudge, and it stings but he supposes it’s at least partially his own fault.

Then the days stretch into weeks and into months, and there is still no word. Yuri begins to worry.

 

_III. Homecoming_

Five years into Yuri’s assignment the United Earth Official Duelist Academy sends out the call for its graduates to return.

Two or three times a decade, the military makes sure the Academy is making good on its reputation with a formal audit of the institution and its more recent graduates. Each time, the Academy invites the relevant parties back to its lunar base for a spectacle that comes second only to the ongoing drama of the fighting rings in TV viewership. A government inspection isn’t supposed to be a venue for entertainment, but it gives the graduates and the school alike a chance to show off, and the competitions held for the sake of formal evaluation are often talked about for years to come. There are banquets, too, and other events set out especially for them, the jewels of Earth’s spacefaring force. Attendance is strongly suggested, but not necessarily required—the military could make it compulsory, but this way has historically been smoother for everyone—which means that Yuri could probably get away with skipping, if he wanted to.

The moment the news goes out, he’s hit with a barrage of new messages in the group channel he never cared to follow before, faded into something near oblivion after its first few years and now resurrected by the premise of a reunion.

_**Phichit Chulanont, 19:22:** Guess who’s baaaaaack _

_**Guang-Hong Ji, 19:22:** Please not again. _

_**Leo de la Iglesia, 19:23:** You remember how out of control this got last time? _

_**Phichit Chulanont, 19:23:** And whose fault was that? _

_**Leo de la Iglesia, 19:23:** Yours, mostly _

_**Phichit Chulanont, 19:24:** Fair point. _

_**Phichit Chulanont, 19:24:** But you helped _

_**Phichit Chulanont, 19:25:** ANYWAY, the point is, the academy is hosting a reunion and guess who just got an invitation _

_**Guang-Hong Ji, 19:26:** All of us. _

_**Leo de la Iglesia, 19:26:** That’s the whole point _

_**Emil Nekola, 19:27:** I’m so excited! You’ll all be there, right? _

_**Phichit Chulanont, 19:27:** My friend, I would not miss it for the world. _

_**Emil Nekola, 19:28:** Mickey, you coming? _

_**Michele Crispino, 19:29:** Ugh _

_**Sara Crispino, 19:29:** My brother is a wet blanket. Of course we’ll both be there. _

_**Jean-Jacques Leroy, 19:29:** Don’t worry, I’m definitely coming! _

_Nobody asked you_ , Yuri thinks, and sets the conversation on mute as the messages start to pile up. He has about a minute of peace, and then the communicator lights up with a notification of a video call waiting for him in the second terminal, and suddenly his heart is pounding in his ears. He never gets video calls from anyone, except for Mila when her service isn’t spotty, or maybe Katsuki on special occasions. There was only one person who ever made a habit of it.

He runs to the terminal, not bothering to notice or care about the looks his shipmates must be giving him as he passes. He pounds the “accept call” button and waits for the line to connect.

Victor’s face greets him, and in that instant the disappointment is so overpowering it rises up, acrid, in his throat, a snarl the boy who first arrived at the Academy would never have been able to swallow, but even if Yuri will never be a picture-perfect diplomat, he can no longer afford to be who he once was.

“Victor,” he says, and if he were in a better mood he’d be proud of himself for sounding almost civil. “What’s this?”

“Yurio! Have you heard the news?”

He can’t resist the temptation to roll his eyes. “How could I not? My damn communicator nearly broke after the old group channel got rediscovered.”

“Yuuri and I want to make sure you’re coming,” Victor says. “It’s been so long since we’ve seen you, Yurio, but you know you aren’t always the most social person, and—

“ ‘Not always the most social person’?”

“You can’t be offended if it’s true. I have been tasked with convincing you by any means necessary to attend by not only my darling husband, but by Mila as well, who is on duty and couldn’t make this call.”

“She could’ve just told me herself,” Yuri mutters, but Victor waves him off.

“I won’t stop short of telling the Board that one of their most successful students might not make the journey,” he says. “I’d produce Otabek Altin to tempt you, if only anyone knew where to find him.”

This, at least, catches Yuri’s interest. _Weak_ , he thinks. _Three years since you’ve spoken with him and you still jump at the mention of his name?_

“You mean no one else has heard from him?”

“You know he only ever kept in touch with you. Leo’s tried messaging him a few times the past couple months, but he hasn’t gotten any response.”

So it really isn’t a grudge. Not that, after all this time, Yuri still needs the confirmation. But even if the news assuages some of his guilt, it deepens the worries he has allowed to settle in its place, and something of this must register in his face, because Victor’s expression softens into one of genuine sympathy.

“I’m sure Otabek is perfectly fine,” he says. “He can probably take care of himself better than most of the rest of us.”

“I know.”

“And he can’t be missing, or the military would’ve sent out a notice. He’s probably just been on assignment somewhere really remote, with no idea how much trouble he’s caused us.”

His logic is unexpectedly less flawed than usual, which Yuri resents and is grateful for at the same time.

“I know,” he says again. “I just wish I knew for sure.”

Victor gives him a gentle smile. “You know Yuuri and I will pass along any information the moment we hear it.”

“Thank you.”

He shakes his head in wonderment. “You really have changed. I can’t remember the last time you thanked me for anything.”

It could be a dig at their past, but that’s not what it sounds like. Still, Yuri glares at him on principle. “So you’d better not make me regret it, right?”

Victor only laughs. “Forget I said anything.”

“Vitya, when do you want to have din—oh, hey Yuri. Did Victor tell you about his latest mission?”

Katsuki has wandered into the frame. He waves at Yuri, and slings a casual arm around Victor’s waist. Yuri looks away.

“Hey. Yeah, he told me.”

“And was he successful? Will you be joining us at the reunion?”

“I’m sure the two of you will conspire with Mila to lead a galaxy-wide manhunt if I don’t,” says Yuri. “So…yes.”

“Fantastic!” He claps his hands together in an uncannily accurate impression of his husband. “It’ll be so nice to see you again.”

“Whatever. Just don’t expect me to go to all the banquets and parties and stuff.”

“As long as we get the chance to meet up with each other, it doesn’t matter.”

Yuri shakes his head, looking accusingly at Victor. “Was he always this cheesy, or only after he met you?”

“It’s a shared vice, I’m afraid.” He places a proud kiss on Katsuki’s cheek, and his husband gives a beatific smile.

“That’s it,” Yuri says, “I’m turning the camera off.”

“Good luck out there! See you soon!”

Yuri signs off, cutting off the tail end of Katsuki’s well-wishes. He lets out a slow breath, leaning his forehead against the darkened screen. His chest feels oddly light, not in a carefree way, but in a way that makes him feel a step out of synch with the rest of the world.

If he felt like lying to himself, he could say that it’s been a long time since he thought about Otabek, and Victor’s mentioning him has stirred up emotions half-forgotten and laid to rest in the back of his brain. Yuri doesn’t feel like being honest, either, but it’s not as if Otabek has been so far from his mind, even if before now he almost fooled himself into believing he had everything so perfectly compartmentalized.

Eyes closed, his thoughts can’t help but drift to the hypothetical he’s been trying to avoid since the news went out. _I’d produce Otabek Altin to tempt you_. If by some incredible twist of fate he could be there, along with everyone else, and with an explanation of where he’s been for so damn long. Dressed up and smiling softly at him.

“You done in here?”

Yuri blinks and realizes the screen has lit up with another call, and one of the engineer’s assistants is staring at him with some concern.

“Yeah,” he says, squeezing himself awkwardly out of the booth. “Yeah, I’m done. Go ahead.”

* * *

The reunion is to open with a banquet for its returning graduates.

Stepping off his shuttle, wearing the only formal clothes left in his wardrobe and pulling at the collar of his shirt even as he tries to catch his reflection in the windows of the lunar spaceport, Yuri’s mind is humming in a way it hasn’t for a long time now. There’s the usual grudging resignation to the trial of wasting an evening on making petty small talk with people whose existence he is generally indifferent to, but along with that is a thrill of nerves that he wasn’t expecting, and even now he can’t quite place. It’s an excited sort of dread, almost like the way he used to feel before a new match in the rings, in the beginning. But that’s still only an almost.

Victor attacks him before he can even make it to the taxi.

“Yurio!”

He tries, with irritatingly little success, to pry himself free of the one-time heir to the Nikiforov Empire. Beside them Katsuki smiles, serenely and knowingly at the same time, and Yuri fires off a few curses at him for not coming to his defense.

“Why would I, when I’m enjoying myself?” is his only response, so Yuri gives in.

They take the taxi up to the school together. Victor and Katsuki’s shuttlecraft came in an hour before his, but the route ferrying returning graduates back to the Academy was so swamped with people that they weren’t able to get a seat until just now.

“But I’m glad now that we didn’t,” Katsuki says, “because we ran into you.”

Victor’s head bobs up and down enthusiastically. “You must tell us everything about how your assignment has been going. You don’t call nearly enough, you know.”

His voice fades into a not entirely unpleasant murmur as Yuri’s thoughts drift away towards what may be in store for him in the coming week. He’s determined to win in every competition he enters, even if the stakes are lower than when his grades or even his life is on the line. It will be a good chance, too, to see how his classmates have done since they parted ways, if they’ve let themselves fall out of practice or honed their talents in the years apart. He’s sure Mila will have plenty of commentary on everything, and he finds himself actually looking forward to the fresh source of entertainment.

But any consideration of enjoyment fades slightly when he is reminded that with every familiar face he sees, he’ll be searching for one that isn’t—that _can’t_ —be there. Already traveling up the old road, watching as the steel towers of the Academy come into view as they rise out of Rheita, he is struck by more memories than he would have expected, soft and stinging both at once. He turns his head to the window, so his companions won’t catch any of it on his face.

They arrive at their destination before much longer, where there are more people to greet, more pleasantries to stomach, all before they’ve even left the airlock chamber. Yuri detaches from his party when Phichit Chulanont materializes with a beaming smile and his camera, and tries to make his way as quietly as possible to the reception hall. His communicator has been buzzing for at least the past twenty minutes—Mila asking where is he, is he here yet, he’d better be here because stuff is already going down and Sara’s in the bathroom so she can’t play the spectator with her. Yuri smiles a little, in spite of himself. She’s shameless.

He nearly makes it all the way there without incident, but just as he’s reaching the doors—

“Oh, Yuri, hey.”

Leo de la Iglesia, who Yuri has had perhaps two conversations with in his entire life, pops out of a door a short ways down the hall and gives a small wave. Yuri, at a loss for what to do, waves back.

“You know,” Leo says, in an oddly conspiratorial manner, “for a moment earlier I thought I caught sight of the back of Otabek Altin’s head, but that can’t be right. He seems to have dropped off the face of the galaxy.”

 _What a wonderful joke this is about the two of us_ , Yuri thinks, grimly, _that everyone seems to be in on except for me_. Victor and Mila’s teasing he can understand, and even coming from a busybody like Phichit he’s learned to expect it. Are the ins and outs of his personal life really so obvious to his everyone he knows?

All these thoughts to distract him from the hope that has begun to rise inside him, and that must, for his own sanity, be crushed to shreds.

With a deep breath, Yuri pushes open the doors to the reception hall, and steps inside.

There are more people than he expected. He didn’t arrive early, but the banquet itself won’t begin for another hour at least, so he has to stick it out through the mingling, which is his least favorite part of any social function. Not just students but faculty and special guests crowd the room, laughing and talking and taking delicate bites from plates of hors d’oeuvres. All at once Yuri feels overwhelmingly out of place, pretending in his grown-up clothes like he knows how to behave at an event that involves any amount of class.

From nowhere a hand brushes gently against his shoulder, and he nearly jumps out of his skin until he sees that it’s only Mila, just slightly taller than him in her four-inch heels and grinning like a cat.

“It’s good to see you again,” she says, simply, and Yuri can’t begrudge her the smallest grin of his own.

“How have you been coping without me?” he asks.

She claps a melodramatic hand to her heart. “It’s been such an ordeal, Yuri. There is simply no one in my whole crew who I can be petty with.”

“Except your loving girlfriend, of course,” Sara says, coming up next to her and giving her a light kiss on the cheek. “Hello, Yuri.”

“Hello, Sara.” Yuri looks back to Mila. “So. Beaten up anyone deserving lately?”

As she launches into a story about a despotic local governor on Ceti 8, Yuri allows his gaze to roam across the room. Victor and Katsuki have made it inside, now, and in addition to Phichit they’ve added Leo and Guang-Hong Ji to their party. JJ is presenting a young woman who even from this distance looks far too good for him to one of their former teachers, and a few meters away from him Christophe Giacometti appears to already be thinking about doing a whole category of indiscriminate things. Yuri looks over at the door, and his heart nearly stops.

Pulse racing double time now, he glances back at Mila, who has turned to make some comment to Sara, and then chances another glance at the entryway.

There, standing just inside the room, looking slightly lost but not even a bit the worse for wear, is Otabek Altin.

He’s cut his hair again. Yuri has never seen it slicked back before, or seen Otabek in a suit, either. He’d have imagined (and—he _has_ imagined, hasn’t he?) that Otabek wouldn’t seem quite comfortable in formalwear, and all the baggage that comes attached to occasions that necessitate dressing up. But here he looks—Yuri goes through several adjectives, and settles on “incredible” because it’s the least invested. Dark blazer and silk tie, new shoes and a carnation in his lapel, like he’s at a fucking wedding. Yuri could throw himself on top of him.

Mila, who must have torn herself away from her girlfriend long enough to wonder why Yuri is gaping in the opposite direction, has caught sight of him too.

“Oh my,” she says, with a smile that is at once sly and relieved. “He looks quite good, doesn’t he?”

Yuri doesn’t have the presence of mind to do anything but nod wordlessly. Mila gives him a little shove forwards.

“Go on. Go up to him.”

Yuri moves through the crowd like he’s walking underwater, slow but weightless, everything around him muted. Otabek’s eyes rake across the room and latch onto his, widening slightly as they do so, before he settles into the biggest grin Yuri has ever seen him give. Yuri’s heart stutters, and he nearly falters in his steps, but with a look back at Mila’s expectant glare he steels himself and continues forward.

“Hey,” Otabek says.

“Hey,” Yuri says.

For a moment they can do nothing but stare at one another, unable to find the words for three years’ worth of unanswered questions.

“You’re here,” Yuri says, finally.

“It took me a while, but I made it.”

“It did.”

Suddenly Yuri remembers how angry he is with him, and he shoves him hard enough to make him stagger back a few paces. Otabek has the audacity to look surprised for a split second, before the expression fades to sober resignation.

“Why didn’t you answer any of my messages? We’ve all been trying to reach you for ages, but we had no idea…you could’ve been _dead_ and I wouldn’t even have known it.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, so kindly and carefully, though his eyes are heavy with conflict. “You’ve done nothing to deserve this. Any of this.”

“I don’t care about your stupid apology,” Yuri says, which is a lie. “I want an explanation. It’s been _three years_.”

“I know,” Otabek says, quietly. He’s looking not at Yuri, now, but at something that floats behind him—both of them—in the past. “Each passing day I thought would be my last in that place, but my mission stretched on, and every night I lay awake daring and dreading to suppose I was causing you an undue amount of pain. I had to hope that you were still angry with me, or determined to forget whatever friendship we might have shared, or the thought of the hurt I put you through…” He shakes his head, and now his gaze is back on Yuri, only on Yuri.

“I’m sorry,” he says, again.

Yuri fights the sudden thickness in his throat to give the only reply he can think of that can be spoken aloud.

“Where were you?” he asks. This time, his words are not an accusation.

“I was undercover,” Otabek says, “for a diplomatic mission on Serpentine.”

Yuri sucks in a breath. He can no longer be upset with Otabek, not in the way he was before, if that’s really where he’s been surviving so many months. “They didn’t put you back in the trenches?”

“They thought they could use me better as a different sort of pawn. It’s no secret our government has been trying to reach a peace accords with the separatists there for a long time now. I was to be an agent of such an agreement.”

“Was?”

Here his smile makes a reappearance—fleetingly, but enough to restore some of the fire to his eyes.

“At my last briefing, I told the higher-ups I was done,” he says, so matter-of-factly, like it’s something anyone could do at any time, though Yuri thinks he looks a little pleased with himself.

“That’s…” He tries to think of an adjective worthy of someone daring enough to commit outright what could technically be labeled treason. “How have you not been court marshaled?”

Otabek gives a small shrug. “Perhaps I only got lucky. Most people can’t go very long on Serpentine without deserting or dying off, or paying their way to somewhere else, and an accomplished duelist is hard to come by. In that sense I have proved my value to them. They bumped me down a few ranks and told me if I ever violated a direct order again I would be ejected from my position without further notice.”

“And they let you come here?”

“I am on temporary leave until the Board can find me a new posting. I chose to come.”

“You chose,” Yuri repeats, murmuring.

“And you?” Otabek turns the question on him with a wry twist at the corner of his mouth. “Have you changed so much in three years that you’ve really started to enjoy this sort of thing?”

“Hell no. Mila and Victor and Katsuki conspired to bully me into coming.”

“So it is possible for you to lose, under force of such combined efforts.”

Yuri makes a face at him. “Also I thought I’d give the Board a chance to remember that I’m the best student they’ve ever had.”

Otabek raises his eyebrows. “That’s a bold claim.”

“I have a few more of those,” Yuri says, giving him a careful, deliberate look, though his heart is pounding. “If you’d like to hear them.”

Otabek’s gaze doesn’t waver. “Perhaps we should find somewhere a little quieter.”

Yuri follows him through the crowd and out into the hall, which is empty. By now everyone’s either found their way inside or already snuck off for furtive moments of their own. Yuri wonders, briefly, if Victor and Katsuki are among that number, or if they decided not to bother and have started going at it on the dance floor, but then he doesn’t have time to think about that any more, because Otabek is pulling open the door to an empty classroom, and here they are, at last, alone together.

“The last time I got you to myself,” Yuri says, “you couldn’t wait to leave.”

He’s trying to make a joke of it, but Otabek’s expression grows somber again.

“I really am sorry, Yura.”

He raises his eyebrows. “Yura?”

“Too much?”

“No,” Yuri says, quietly, “I like it. And I’m—I’m sorry, too. About what happened on Myri. You had every right to let an emergency mission take priority over some stupid vacation.”

Otabek nods, accepting his apology. “I wanted to be with you, though.”

“Are you sure you’ve been a spy all these years, or have you been taking lessons at Victor Nikiforov’s sap school?”

“If I recall correctly,” says Otabek, “you were the one begging me to stay.”

“I didn’t _beg_ ,” Yuri says, “I demanded. That’s totally different.”

“And what would you demand of me now?”

There’s a smile in Otabek’s voice and in his eyes, but not the teasing sort. It’s laced with the intensity of focus Yuri has seen on him in the heat of a fight, when he’s issuing or accepting a challenge, a look that lets people know he may be soft-spoken, but he’s made of steel. Yuri’s stomach wrenches, but he does his best to swallow his nerves, and takes a step closer.

“Only that this time we don’t get interrupted.”

First tentatively, and then with complete self-assurance, Otabek slips a hand around the small of Yuri’s back and pulls him in closer. If Yuri were able to, in this moment, he’d mutter _finally_ just to make Otabek laugh at him, but as it is his willpower is spent coaxing his shaking hands to rest against Otabek’s shoulders. They’re still for a moment, considering each other, and then Yuri closes his eyes.

Otabek kisses him, at the start, with maddening slowness, vehemence evident but kept carefully and excruciatingly restrained, as though he’s trying to commit each second of this to memory, moving his fingers to thread through Yuri’s hair and cradle the base of his skull. For just a moment Yuri feels faint and frozen in place by the sudden reality of what he’s imagined a hundred times over, and then he grabs Otabek by the collar to drag him closer, stumbling back to come to a seat on top of the nearest desk. Otabek scrapes his teeth across Yuri’s lower lip, bending down to bite at his jaw, his throat, the curve of his collarbone beneath his shirt. Yuri gives a small, ragged gasp, and he can feel Otabek grinning against his skin, so he shoves him a little in retaliation, and Otabek moves his hands from Yuri’s head to his waist, tightening his grip.

But then he pulls back, looking at him with a kind of wonderment that is almost overwhelming, and Yuri buries his head in the crook of his neck. After a moment, Otabek reaches up to stroke his hair.

“What is it?”

“It’s been three years,” Yuri mumbles, and he can feel his cheeks heating up. “I thought maybe you wouldn’t want this anymore. If you ever did in the first place.”

“At great risk of embarrassing myself,” Otabek says, pressing his lips to Yuri’s forehead, “I can certifiably tell you that I have. Wanted this, I mean. For…a long time.”

Yuri looks up at him. “How long?”

Now it’s Otabek’s turn to flush. “That’s not important.”

Yuri kicks him. “How _long_ , asshole?”

He looks away. “Since our first year at the Academy, at least.”

“But it still took you eight _fucking_ years.”

“Was it worth the wait?”

In answer, Yuri reaches out to pull him down again, but suddenly Otabek turns away.

“I’ve realized that I can’t be you,” he says. “I can’t sell my soul for my ambition. Not all of it. I have to take a stand for myself somewhere, even if it means I won’t go as far as I know you will.”

He’s conceding Yuri’s victory, but Yuri won’t let him off the hook so easily.

“Soul or no,” he says, “you’d better not be thinking of backing out on our competition.”

“I…”

Yuri glares at him, which only makes him smile, ducking his head as he tries to hide it.

“I will of course look forward to soundly defeating you at some future point.”

“Good.” Yuri pauses. “But I’m going to win, of course.”

In answer, Otabek dips down to rest his cheek against Yuri’s shoulder.

“Stay the night with me.”

Yuri bumps his forehead against Otabek’s. “Say it again.”

“Stay with me,” Otabek says, low and light as a breath of air, and Yuri aches with the words. He is under no delusions. Distance and time are cruel masters, out here, and in the end they are the only things that can be relied upon, the only measures of permanence. He can put both aside for tonight, but he cannot hold them off forever.

In this moment, all he knows is that he will not wait any longer.

He slides off the desk, tugging Otabek along with him. “I think it’s time for a change of scenery.”

Otabek raises his eyebrows, though he can’t fight the grin tugging at the corner of his lips. “What about the banquet?”

“Are you telling me you flew halfway across the galaxy for a banquet?”

He traces the line of Yuri’s jaw with a careful finger. “Among…other things.”

“What things, exactly?”

The grin widens. “You’ll have to find out.”

Yuri pulls him towards the door, and out into the hallway that will take them to the nearest hatch for the underground tunnels, sealed off from the surface and pressure-controlled, that connect all of the buildings in the Academy compound. As returning graduates, they will be staying at the Guest House, and the accommodations are not quite hotel level, but they’re certainly better than the bunkrooms they stayed in as students. As it turns out, Otabek has been assigned to the same floor as Yuri, and as he’s being ushered inside he thinks back to another room so long ago, on Myri, and one even before that, that they shared when they first made it here, bound together by coincidence, never knowing it would lead them to this moment now.

“What are you thinking about?” Otabek asks him.

Yuri takes his time with the words. “I think I can almost understand it now.”

“What?”

“How Victor could’ve stayed in Japan, when he should’ve flown back to Moscow.”

There’s amusement in Otabek’s voice. “You really want to talk about Victor right now? Should I be offended?”

“Didn’t you hear any of what I just said?” Yuri asks, rolling his eyes, and then his heart drops and his chest goes light, because Otabek is looking at him with such soft eyes that he has to duck his head.

“Anyway,” he says, “it’s pointless to think about it. We don’t have the option of staying here.”

“No,” says Otabek, and he slips his arms around Yuri’s waist. “We’ll figure it out. Whatever happens, wherever I end up, I’m not going anywhere.”

And Yuri hugs him like he hasn’t hugged anyone else before—so tightly against him, not because he is afraid of what the future might bring (though perhaps he is, just a little), but because he is so grateful for Otabek, for his presence, for whatever future they will have together. He remembers a trip to Victory Park with his grandfather when he was seven or eight, to see all the tanks from an old old war. It was December, and it was snowing, and Yuri was laughing, spinning around with his arms thrown out trying to catch the snowflakes on his tongue.

_Dedushka, will you take me to see the fighting rings tomorrow, like you promised?_

_Hush with that, Yurotchka, and come try the pirozhki I made for us._ His grandfather ruffled his hair. It had been a very nice day, and it promised to be nicer still, but at the time Yuri thought he sounded almost sad. _What comes will come. You know I’ll always be here for you, Yurotchka. Always._

Yuri finds his eyes are stinging. He swallows hard. He felt so safe, then. He feels safe again now. Otabek brushes a finger against his cheek.

“I’m sorry I can’t promise you more,” he says. Yuri shakes his head.

“I think there’ve been enough apologies for one day. Like you said—we’ll figure it out. Just no more disappearing on me, okay?”

“Never again.” Otabek pauses. “It took some time for the Bureau of Communications to forward all the messages that were sent to me during the years I was in the no-call zone. I noticed there were some from you.”

“That’s in the past, now.” Yuri relinquishes his hold on Otabek to pull him into what he remembers of a waltz position. “There’s been enough talk about that today, too.”

Otabek moves in close and kisses him softly on the corner of his mouth. “For the future, then.”

And Yuri grins into him. “For the future.”

What comes will come. The stars will continue to burn and the planets will continue to spin, and the Academy will continue churning out graduates and the galaxy will continue churning out wars, and the two of them will continue to be caught in the middle of it all. Yuri will become an admiral, and Otabek will too, someday, and they’ll go back to Earth or they won’t, they’ll see the rest of the universe together or they won’t. All the possibilities are still ahead of them.

Here, and now, by the light of an infinite canvas of stars, they begin to dance.

 

 

_Bonus:_

_**Mila Babicheva, 21:22:** So, were you able to work things out with Otabek?_

_**Mila Babicheva, 22:59:** Judging by your radio silence, I’m going to assume that you two are now screwing each other into a blissful oblivion. Congratulations! And because I am such a good friend, I won’t even tell Victor _

_**Mila Babicheva, 23:03:** but remember: protection_

**Author's Note:**

> stay safe, kids


End file.
